In an industrial park on the outskirts of Beijing, a humanoid arm picks up a bag of Lay's potato chips and places it neatly along a row of snacks on a shelf. Nearby, a worker films himself grabbing cushions off a sofa and folding sheets on a bed, recording videos that will be used to develop brains for robots. China is deploying more humanoids than ever before, sending thousands to logistics hubs, battery factories and other industrial locations at a faster pace than the U.S. Buoyed by support from the government and a flood of investment, startups are getting their most advanced machines out into the world in a bid to gather torrents of data that can fuel the development of smarter, more humanlike machines. President Xi Jinping is looking to the robotics industry for help beating the U.S. in a global technology race. China's manufacturing prowess and robust supply chain management position it well to reap the benefits of humanoids before its geopolitical rival. Xi is due to address the country's flagship AI conference this week for the first time, where the latest humanoids will be on display.

Can China repeat its EV success with robotaxis? In Beijing's Yizhuang district, driverless vehicles have become a common sight. Robotaxis weave through traffic alongside ordinary cars, while autonomous delivery vans glide along the inside lane as they carry packages to collection points. The district has become one of China's testing grounds for autonomous driving, with companies including Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai operating commercial robotaxi services within designated areas. Booking a ride requires little more than opening an app.

Zhipu's AI service on the web, dubbed Z.ai. BEIJING/BENGALURU - Since DeepSeek shocked markets early last year with its cheap but powerful artificial intelligence model, global consumers have been faced with a choice: Chinese offerings with lower prices and less capability or OpenAI or Anthropic, which have poured billions into development. A model called GLM-5.2, launched last month by Beijing-based startup Z.ai, may finally be closing that gap in terms of Western interest. GLM-5.2 has Silicon Valley buzzing with its coding and agent capabilities, or the ability to execute complex tasks with minimal prompting, that almost rival leading U.S. offerings at a fraction of the cost, in what some experts are calling a "mini DeepSeek moment." In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

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The Chinese supercomputer LineShine was ranked as the fastest in the world, despite not using any GPUs. China now has the world's fastest supercomputer, overtaking the United States. The system, known as LineShine and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, displaced the US system El Capitan from the top spot in the TOP500 ranking in terms of computing power. The breakthrough comes amid an intense competition between Beijing and Washington for technological supremacy, marked by high tariffs and restrictions on a wide range of hardware components and software. Since 1993, the TOP500 ranking has identified the world's most powerful supercomputers every six months through a series of standardized benchmarks that evaluate each system's performance, taking into account both its theoretical speed and its real-world performance, as well as its energy efficiency.

The AI arms race between China and the US has researchers on both sides worried about a "Chernobyl moment." Just over a week ago, I attended a major artificial intelligence conference in Zhongguancun, Beijing's bustling high-tech district. It was packed with fascinating sessions touching on everything from recursive self-improvement--the idea that models can tweak their own code and advance indefinitely--to humanoid robots. And it featured a few legends of computing, including Whitfield Diffie, co-inventor of public-key cryptography, and Andrew Barto, who won the Turing Award with Rich Sutton for his pioneering work on reinforcement learning. But I left with one takeaway above all else: The US and China should put their fierce AI rivalry to the side.

Samples of rare earth luminescent materials displayed at an exhibition on China's manufacturing achievements at the National Museum in Beijing in March | REUTERS China's tightening export controls on dual-use materials and strategically important rare earths are beginning to disrupt Japanese industry -- including the defense sector. Chinese customs data tell the sharpest part of the story. Exports of dysprosium oxide to Japan ceased after October 2025, and shipments of terbium oxide ended a month later. No shipments of either material have been recorded since. The halt matters because dysprosium and terbium -- both heavy rare earth elements -- are among the most critical inputs for high-performance permanent magnets used in advanced military systems, electric vehicle motors, aerospace applications and industrial robotics.

China beats U.S. with world's fastest supercomputer, but race not geared for AI work Workers at Elon Musk's xAI facility, which houses a large supercomputer known as Colossus, used for Artificial Intelligence (AI) data processing, in Memphis, Tennessee, on Sept. 11, 2025 | REUTERS SAN FRANCISCO - China has overtaken the U.S. to win the top spot on a list of the world's fastest supercomputers, but the results may say more about Beijing's desire to show self-sufficiency in computing systems than its standing in the global AI race, experts said. The LineShine system at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, China, uses domestically designed chips and won the top spot on the TOP500, a biannual global ranking of supercomputers, with the country's first listing in three years. The ranking comes as the U.S. and China are increasingly competing in advanced computing, with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signing an executive order that aims to put the U.S. ahead of China in the emerging field of quantum computing. In the June 2026 edition of TOP500, LineShine beat out the previous titleholder, El Capitan, a supercomputer housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that the U.S. government uses to develop and maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile. But technology and policy experts said the results do not mean that China has the world's fastest computer for AI work because of changes in the computing industry in recent years and the methods used to compile the list.

People stand near humanoid robots on display at the Nvidia booth during the China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China June 22, 2026. Nvidia Corp. is working to make humanoid robots safer around people, arguing that they'll need to handle split-second decisions before they can be trusted to work closely with humans. The chipmaker is offering software and semiconductors that will allow humanoids to enter the workplace and truly interact with people -- even making physical contact if necessary. Nvidia's Halos software, developed from systems used for self-driving vehicles, will be the basis of computers that give robots a much better awareness of what's happening around them, the company said in a statement Monday. Nvidia and its Silicon Valley peers are racing to develop technology for robotics, billing it as the next big market for artificial intelligence. The machines will evolve into a market with billions of devices, tech executives predict.

As AI spreads across workplaces, China is also having to contend with chronic weakness in the jobs market. China's rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace has prompted an unusually blunt call from a state-run newspaper to protect labor rights, as Beijing considers how to contain risks posed by the new technology. In an editorial published on Thursday, the Workers' Daily -- the official mouthpiece of China's umbrella trade union organization -- urged government agencies to mount an active response as new threats emerge to the rights of employees. It called on regulators to improve labor standards and strengthen oversight of AI algorithms, including by giving a greater say to trade unions and workers' representatives. "The benefits of technological advancement should be shared by society as a whole, rather than becoming a tool for a small number of employers to undermine workers' rights," the editorial said.