T Trending on Weibo

T Trending on Weibo

Tech

China's First EV Boom Is Producing Its First Wave of Retired Batteries

The projection that China's retired electric-car batteries will top one million tonnes a year by 2030 has been trending on Baidu, landing as the country's earliest mass-market EVs hit the age when their packs fall below 80 percent capacity — and a recycling industry built on second lives and mined-out metals comes of age.

DeepSeek Orders 160,000 Huawei Chips in a $2.56 Billion Bet on Domestic AI Silicon

DeepSeek Orders 160,000 Huawei Chips in a $2.56 Billion Bet on Domestic AI Silicon

DeepSeek has ordered at least 160,000 of Huawei's next-generation Ascend 950DT chips for a new Inner Mongolia data center — one of the largest known clusters of Chinese AI silicon, worth about $2.56 billion. The lab that stunned the industry with efficient models is betting its infrastructure on domestic chips, and says it is willing to wait out Huawei's production bottleneck.

Why China Has Fallen for Clip-On Earphones

Why China Has Fallen for Clip-On Earphones

A Weibo question about why clip-on earphones are suddenly everywhere drew thousands of answers this week: inflamed ear canals, 'oily ears,' and a pivot from noise-cancelling immersion to all-day situational awareness — with Shokz's new OpenDots 2 signaling the category's maturation.

At the World Power Battery Conference, CATL founder Zeng Yuqun said China's automakers have compressed development from 54 months to as little as 12 — 'at the cost of product quality and consumer trust.' His 'rushed car' warning is now trending nationwide.

CATL's Chairman Warns That China's Rushed EVs Are Trading Quality for Speed

4 Sep 2026

China's telecom filing database lists Huawei's unannounced Mate 90 series as a '5G digital mobile phone' — the first time since US sanctions gutted the company's chip supply that its own filing says the quiet part out loud. One well-followed engineer argues the label change marks the end of a deliberate gray zone.

Huawei's Next Flagship Is Certified as a 5G Phone — Openly, This Time

4 Sep 2026

OpenAI's launch of GPT-6 Astra dominated Baidu and Zhihu within hours, with near-perfect benchmark scores, a fifteen-minute 3D iPod demo and a disputed number-theory result driving the discussion. The trending conversation doubles as a status report from a tech scene measuring a frontier it does not hold.

China's Tech Media Take the Measure of GPT-6, the Model OpenAI Calls First AGI

4 Sep 2026

Renren Video, the fan-subtitle group whose 2021 prosecution became China's best-known copyright case, is back on app stores as a fully licensed streaming service charging 25 yuan a month. The relaunch tests whether two decades of accumulated goodwill can survive a paywall.

Renren Video Returns as a Legal Streaming App, Four Years After Its Piracy Case Brought It Down

3 Sep 2026

Screenshots of a WeChat feature that lists which contacts have deleted you went viral, drawing tens of thousands of likes — but Tencent says the pop-up only appears when a user hits the app's 10,000-friend limit, and there are no plans to give ordinary users a way to check.

WeChat's 'Who Deleted You' Pop-Up Is Real — But Only If Your Friend List Is Full

3 Sep 2026

The Freelander, the Land Rover that once defined the family SUV, is back after a decade — built by Chery's joint venture with Jaguar Land Rover, launched first in Beijing, and running Huawei driver-assistance software as standard. It is the clearest picture yet of how far Chinese tech has penetrated the foreign brands.

Land Rover's Freelander Returns as a Chinese-Built SUV With Huawei Brains

3 Sep 2026

China's broadcasting authorities have started rolling televisions with the set-top box built in out to the whole country, beginning with China Broadcasting Network's first national procurement of integrated-TV adapters. The tangle of remotes and cables behind the Chinese TV is finally on its way out — and viewers are already warning about what might replace it.

China Begins a National Phaseout of the Set-Top Box

3 Sep 2026

Xiaomi has confirmed a September 7 launch event for its Pengcheng N70 and N90 electric SUVs, the Mi 18 Fold foldable and a tablet built on its in-house Xuanjie O3 chip — three days before Huawei and Apple hold their own events in the same week.

Xiaomi Sets September 7 Launch for New EVs and a Foldable, Head-to-Head With Huawei and Apple

2 Sep 2026

The $399 Robot Duck Developers Can't Get Their Hands On Is Made in Shenzhen

2 Sep 2026

Two mandatory national standards published by the industry ministry set a legal safety floor for driver-assist and autonomous systems, requiring them to match a 'qualified and attentive human driver' and barring the marketing hype that has blurred what cars can actually do. They take effect in 2027.

China Makes Self-Driving Safety a Legal Floor: Mandatory National Standards for L2 to L4

2 Sep 2026

Nubia's NaviX Ultra, the first phone built around ByteDance's Doubao assistant, has cleared China's final certification step — putting an 'AI agent phone' on shelves this month and setting up a test of whether AI-native hardware can sell.

China's First 'AI Agent Phone' Clears Certification, With ByteDance's Doubao Inside

1 Sep 2026

An undercover investigation into China's AI pornography trade has exposed a platformized black market: fifty-yuan monthly subscriptions that minors can buy, 'one-click undress' tools sold openly, and screenwriting jobs paying more than 40,000 yuan a month.

Fifty Yuan a Month: An Investigation Maps China's AI Porn Short-Drama Industry

1 Sep 2026

Phone Prices Climb Again in China, but Shoppers Are Holding On to Their Old Handsets

1 Sep 2026

A recommendation glitch served China's biggest short-video app a stream of health tips and AI dramas, then the platform crashed outright — a rare public look at what happens when the algorithm that knows you briefly stops.

Douyin Users Say Their Feeds Suddenly Turned Into a 'Middle-Aged Channel'

1 Sep 2026

Employees at Unitree, China's first listed humanoid-robot maker, describe a culture of 100-yuan expense approvals and punishment-only incentives — an inside look at the company behind the country's robot mania, two weeks after its blockbuster IPO.

Unitree Employees Say the Reward System Is 'Only Punishment, Almost No Reward'

1 Sep 2026