China’s AI robots dazzle as IP battles loom

Insight: A year after the DeepSeek launch, China’s AI and robotics sectors are pivoting from experimental models to applications. The annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, China’s most-watched television show, served as a high-profile showroom for this transition, featuring ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 video generation model and Unitree’s G1 humanoid robots. The sight of dozens of robots performing coordinated martial arts signaled a leap in embodied AI and cluster-control hardware. Yet these gains are shadowed by intensifying "distillation" disputes. Following question marks over DeepSeek’s efficiency, Chinese labs now face formal accusations from Anthropic and OpenAI of harvesting Western reasoning models to accelerate their own development.

Impact: This rapid iteration creates a fraught competitive landscape. It underscores China’s capacity to commercialize frontier technology at scale, moving humanoids from the lab to mass-market visibility and driving up short-term orders. However, friction with firms like Anthropic points toward a period of trench warfare over intellectual property and training methodologies. If Chinese firms continue to successfully "distill" high-end reasoning into low-cost hardware, traditional moats built on compute volume and proprietary IP may no longer hold. As the gap between Western innovation and Chinese scale collapses through these controversial methods, one must ask: where will this competition end?

Announced under Budget 2026, Singapore's additional injection to the Financial Sector Development Fund aims to deepen domestic capital markets liquidity. The move builds on last year’s SGD5 billion Equity Market Development Programme, which was designed to encourage high-growth companies to list on the Singapore Exchange. 

Insight: Foreign investors have long complained that takeover bids in Japan get tangled up in red tape and urged the government to modernize the approval process. They may now get more than they bargained for. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, fresh from her landslide election victory, is planning a sweeping overhaul of the way Japan screens foreign investments. She plans to create a local version of CFIUS, the feared Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that has blocked, or at least seriously delayed, many a US-inbound M&A transaction — notably Nippon Steel’s takeover of US Steel, a friendly deal which nevertheless took 18 months to close.

Impact: Politically, this initiative fits neatly into the new PM’s brand of nationalist populism. And there is indeed growing unease among Japanese companies — and perhaps even Japanese citizens — about the rise of overseas activist investors; and, also, the risks of allowing some foreign interests (read: China) access to sensitive technologies and sectors. But the government needs to beware of unintended consequences. Despite significant progress on corporate governance reform, Japanese companies still have more takeover defenses available than perhaps they should have. Their financial returns and attention to shareholders could certainly do with further improvement. Activist campaigns and a nascent takeover boom help to force attention on the bottom line. It would be a shame if these were choked off in the name of national security.  

Insight: Hong Kong’s urban fabric is shifting, visibly and gradually. Beyond the disappearance of neon signs and the iconic red taxis, the city is also undergoing major architectural revamps. In Central, the Henderson Building – designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and completed in 2024 – has just been crowned the “World’s Best Building” at the UK-based International Property Awards, drawing global attention to its striking, curvilinear form at the heart of the financial district. Closer to the waterfront, the 19-year-old sky bridge connecting IFC to the Star Ferry is being taken down, replaced by a temporary, modern, air-conditioned walkway until Harbour Central – a green public hub – is completed in 2027.  

Impact: The nostalgists might mourn. There’s a certain romance to the old Hong Kong aesthetics, and every demolished walkway or stripped façade can feel like a piece of the city’s rich history chipped away. But what’s unfolding is less a loss than a reinvention. The Henderson signals that Hong Kong can lead globally in architectural ambition, and Harbour Central’s green vision points to a city prioritizing livability and sustainability. Hong Kong needs to cultivate a new visual identity that’s distinctively its own – not anchored in heritage, but something bold enough to define its next chapter. 

Two Chinese American Olympians - freestyle skier Eileen Gu and figure skater Alysa Liu - have found themselves cast as opposing symbols in the US-China rivalry. Both were born and raised in the United States, but one competes for China, and the other for the US. What should be a personal career decision has become a flashpoint online, with each athlete framed as either patriot or traitor, hero or mercenary. 

This analysis from the BBC shows sport is being pulled into great-power competition. In a “New Cold War” climate, even cultural and personal choices are interpreted through the lens of national loyalty and ideological alignment – and public opinion matters as much as trade balances or military strength. 

Read the full piece here.