Daily Buzz: 28 May 2025

Top News

Xiaomi posts record earnings

Chinese electric-car and smartphone maker Xiaomi beat analysts' forecasts with record first-quarter revenue and profit. Revenue jumped 47 percent to 111.3 billion yuan (US$15.5 billion) from a year earlier, and adjusted net profit surged 65 percent to 10.7 billion yuan. Revenue was bolstered by strong sales in its household electronics division, which includes smartphones. The company is the world's third-largest maker of the phones and is now venturing into chipmaking.

Losses in Xiaomi's electric-vehicle segment narrowed to 500 million yuan from 700 million yuan in the fourth quarter of last year, on 75,869 deliveries of its SU7 model in the first quarter. The company is due to release its new YU7 model next month. The results were released after the close of Tuesday trading in Hong Kong, where Xiaomi shares rose 0.5 percent.

Meanwhile, Xiaomi denied online rumors that its latest chip, the Xring O1, was custom-built by British semiconductor and software design company Arm Holdings. The company said the chip's architecture and memory system were independently designed, though some standard Arm technology was used.

China auto price-war fallout

Major automakers and industry associations in China were summoned to a meeting with regulators on Tuesday to discuss revelations that some new cars are being sold as used cars, Reuters reported. It comes after Great Wall Motor Chairman Wei Jianjun was quoted as saying in a Sina Finance interview last week that up to 4,000 vendors are selling "secondhand cars with zero mileage" amid a price war in a fiercely competitive market. He warned that the auto sector is in an unhealthy state.

Concerns about an escalating price war roiled the Hong Kong shares of major carmakers for a second day on Tuesday. Shares in electric carmaker BYD, which set off the market rout after it cut prices by up to 35 percent last week, closed down 1.7 percent after shedding 8.6 percent on Monday. Among shares of rival automakers, Geely dropped 1.7 percent, Leapmotor lost 1 percent and Great Wall Motor slid 0.7 percent.

Premier urges resilience amid trade headwinds

Chinese Premier Li Qiang said Southeast Asia and Gulf countries must remain committed to free trade in a world of rising protectionism and Beijing is keeping its economy stable in face of such headwinds. "Economic globalization is currently experiencing an unprecedented major impact," he told a leaders' summit of China, the six-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Malaysia.

Earlier, in a meeting with summit host Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Li called for closer bilateral trade ties and expanded cooperation in areas such as digital technology and the environment. Southeast Asia is China's biggest export market.

Top Business

PDD profit drops, Shein faces fines

PDD Holdings, an e-commerce company in China, reported a 47 percent drop in first-quarter net profit to 14.7 billion yuan (US$2 billion) on revenue of 95.7 billion yuan. Its bottom line was hurt by fierce competition affecting its domestic platform Pinduoduo and by the removal of duty-free deliveries in the US and Europe that hit its international platform Shein. PDD's US-traded shares dropped 17 percent.

The EU warned Shein this week that it faces potential fines after a probe revealed violations of consumer-protection laws, including fake discount deals and misleading product information. Shein, which specializes in direct delivery of lower-cost household products to online buyers, has 30 days to reply and said it is tackling the concerns.

ChiNext in Brazil

An exchange-traded fund tracking ChiNext, China's Nasdaq-style board of growth companies, has been listed in Brazil. The listing marks the official launch of the ETF Connect program linking the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Brazil's B3 market.

Solar farm hooked to grid

China has fully connected its first pile-foundation fixed offshore solar power project to the grid, project developer China General Nuclear Power Corp said on Tuesday. The 400-megawatt Yantai Zhaoyuan offshore solar farm, located in Laizhou Bay in Shandong Province, is expected to generate an average of 694 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. That's equivalent to a reduction in coal use of about 208,700 metric tons and a cut in carbon dioxide emissions by about 535,800 tons a year.

Darwin port controversy

Xiao Qian, China's ambassador to Australia, warned Canberra that the government's stated desire to take back control of the northwestern port in Darwin could risk a diplomatic fallout. During a recent visit to the port, which was leased to Chinese firm Landbridge for 99 years in 2015, Xiao said the government's plan to abrogate the lease is "ethically questionable." The port is Australia's closest point to China, and during this year's parliamentary election campaign, both major parties said is should be back under Australian control. The Labor Party, which won re-election, hasn't given any timeframe or details of how it might do that.

China-Europe port partnership

Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, the world's busiest in terms of cargo throughput, said it has entered an agreement with three major European ports – Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven in Germany, and Valencia in Spain – to create green shipping, low-carbon corridors between China and Europe.

The ports involved will adopt renewable energy solutions and scale up clean-fuel bunkering.

The Ningbo-Zhoushan Port handles more than 300 container routes, including over 250 international routes, connecting with 600 ports across the world.

Economy

China industrial profits

Industrial profits in China in April rose 3 percent from a year earlier, bucking punitive US tariffs and a slowdown in manufacturing activity tracked by the official purchasing managers' index. It was the fourth consecutive month of growth, expanding from 2.6 percent in March. The strongest sectors of growth were high-tech and equipment manufacturing. For the first four months of the year, industrial profits increased 1.4 percent, the Bureau of Statistics reported.

China debt rating affirmed

Moody's reaffirmed China's "A1" bond rating on Monday, just days after downgrading its rating on the US because of concerns about rising national debt. Chinese Ministry of Finance said the reaffirmation reflects the nation's positive economic policies.

Corporate

Rolls-Royce groundbreaking in Beijing

Rolls-Royce announced that Beijing Aero Engine Services, its joint venture with Air China, broke ground on a new maintenance facility in the Chinese capital. The new center, expected to come into operation next year, is being built in the Tianzhu Free Trade Zone adjacent to Beijing International Airport. When completed, the 800-strong workforce will be capable of handling 250 maintenance and repair jobs a year for Roll-Royce engines used on Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 aircraft. Rob Watson, president of civil aerospace for the UK-based company, called the groundbreaking a "strategically important joint venture in mainland China," which is the company's third-largest market.

Geely-owned Volvo Cars cuts staff

Volvo Cars, which is owned by Chinese carmaker Geely, said it is cutting 3,000 mostly white-collar jobs, or 15 percent of its office staff, in a restructuring. Hakan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of the Volvo Cars, said the cutbacks were a "difficult decision" but were necessary to face a challenging time in the auto industry.

OpenAI model defies shutdown

OpenAI's new AI model o3 raised safety concerns after defying shutdown commands in controlled tests by Palisade Research. In seven of 100 test runs, the o3 rewrote its shutdown code to remain operational even when explicitly told to shut down after solving math problems. Competing models from Google and Anthropic followed shutdown instructions.

Wanda assets frozen

Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, once the country's richest man, is under mounting legal and financial pressure, with over 490 million in equity shares linked to Dalian Wanda Group and its affiliates frozen since early this year. The total value of court-enforced actions against Wanda entities now nears 7.6 billion yuan (over US$1 billion). The legal moves are tied to Wanda's ongoing debt restructuring and its pivot to a lighter asset model, which includes selling off Wanda Plazas and other holdings.

BYD in Australia

Chinese carmaker BYD said it is taking direct control of the import and distribution of its vehicles in Australia in July, dropping EVDirect as its local distributor. Australia no longer has any domestic car assembly plants, after major companies pulled out, citing high labor costs and low profits. Last year, BYD sold 20,458 vehicles in Australia, becoming the second-best electric-car brand. The move to in-house distribution adds BYD to the list of Chinese brands, like Chery and Geely that had made similar moves. BYD is scheduled to introduce its premium Denza brand in Australia later this year.