Day: April 23, 2026

DeepSeek has finally released its much-anticipated next-generation foundational artificial intelligence model, the open-source V4, which it said was competitive with leading US closed-source models from the likes of OpenAI and Google DeepMind. DeepSeek released two versions of the model on Friday, with the V4-pro model boasting 1.6 trillion parameters, making it the Hangzhou start-up’s biggest ever model by that metric, while the smaller V4-flash model has 284 billion parameters. Both models have a context window of 1 million tokens, a critical feature that determines the amount of information an AI…

Taiwanese analysts have broadly welcomed a new US Navy plan to deploy thousands of uncrewed surface vessels across the Indo-Pacific by 2030, saying it could complicate Beijing’s military planning and strengthen deterrence. But they also warned that unless Taipei pressed ahead with its own stalled drone fleet ambitions, the approach might offer Taiwan only limited direct benefit, given Washington’s production, logistics and surveillance challenges. The assessments follow remarks this week by Captain Garrett Miller, who said the US Navy expected to field more than 30 medium uncrewed surface vessels in…

An overhaul of listing and trading rules has driven a 16-year-old board for start-ups on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to an all-time high, and traders believe the listed companies’ above-average earnings growth and exposure to renewable energy will extend the record-setting run. The ChiNext 50 Index of the board’s 50 biggest stocks and the ChiNext Composite Index both broke highs set in 2015 this week, outpacing other equity gauges of yuan-denominated stocks, which have yet to fully recoup their losses since the beginning of the Middle East conflict. Buying sentiment…

China has launched a bond-market-connect scheme with Brazil, Chinese media outlets reported this week, marking the first such link among emerging markets. Schemes such as this one, often dubbed “connects” between Chinese bond or stock markets and their offshore counterparts, typically allow investors to bypass special permits or capital-flow controls when trading on either side’s exchanges. Advertisement China now maintains at least five offshore capital-market “connect” schemes on three continents. Hong Kong: The Global Gateway The Hong Kong stock exchange set up China’s best-known connect scheme with the bourses in…

US President Donald Trump’s close ally, Senator Steve Daines, will lead a bipartisan delegation to China next week, according to sources, even as Washington steps up pressure on Beijing over trade, technological competition, and its ties to Iran, ahead of a closely watched leaders’ summit on May 14-15. According to people familiar who requested anonymity, the five-member delegation led by Daines, a Republican from Montana, will begin its visit on May 1, with stops in Shanghai and Beijing. The trip has been in the works since last year and was…

US confrontations with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz point to future American attempts to contain China via maritime chokepoints, a Chinese policy adviser has warned, suggesting that Beijing boost its naval presence in the region. In a policy recommendation addressed to Beijing, Gu Dingguo, an East China Normal University research fellow in neighbourhood diplomacy and security, said the Iran war reflected Washington’s greater emphasis on implementing its maritime security strategy. “By observing Iran’s leverage over strategic waterways, the US is likely to intensify its focus on global maritime chokepoints,…