China’s consumer prices remained flat in July

Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.Coming up on today’s programChina sees positive price trends in July amid demand pickup;“ChatGPT moment” for robots is likely to arrive within 3 years, said Unitree’s Wang Xingxing.Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours China reported positive signs in terms of both consumer and producer prices last month, as government policies to boost domestic demand continued to take hold.The consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, climbed 0.4 percent in July compared with the previous month, reversing a 0.1-percent drop in June and exceeding the average seasonal pace of 0.3 percent, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Saturday.On an annual basis, the CPI was unchanged in July, while the core CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.8 percent -- a rising streak for three consecutive months.NBS statistician Dong Lijuan said these positive trends were driven mainly by higher prices for services and industrial consumer goods, while emphasizing the effective role of policy measures in expanding demand.China has intensified moves to bolster domestic economic circulation this year, including stronger fiscal support for consumer goods trade-ins nationwide and strengthened focus on key service sectors such as elderly care and childcare and digital consumption.Saturday's data also revealed improved signs in the industrial sector. The producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, fell 0.2 percent from a month ago in July -- an improvement considering the 0.4 percent-drop recorded in June, while also marking the first month-on-month narrowing since March. Compared with a year earlier, the PPI slid by 3.6 percent in July, the same as in June.Dong attributed the improving PPI performance in part to optimized market competition order, ongoing industrial shifts and unleashed domestic demand potential.GBA expressAs of the end of July, the number of local companies registered in the Hong Kong SAR exceeded 1.5 million, and the number of non-Hong Kong companies registered in the city surpassed 15,000, both hitting record highs, John Lee Ka-chiu, chief executive of the HKSAR, said on Sunday. From January 2023 to July 2025, InvestHK assisted 1,333 companies in setting up or expanding operations in the region and created more than 19,000 new jobs. The agency also attracted HK$174 billion in first-year direct investment, Lee said.Chinese mainland insurers have stepped up their holdings in Hong Kong-listed companies during the first half of the year. Public announcements showed that 13 out of the 19 major increased shareholding cases reported by mainland insurance companies so far this year have targeted companies trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange. According to the latest report released by the Insurance Asset Management Association of China, 63 percent of the surveyed Chinese mainland insurers will expand their investment in Hong Kong stocks this year.Ab&B Bio-Tech soared as much as 169 percent in its trading debut in the Hong Kong SAR, after retail investors flocked to the Chinese mainland vaccine maker’s initial public offering. The stock climbed to as high as HK$34.64 per share on Monday morning, more than double its HK$12.90 IPO price, which was set at the low end of the marketed range.  Industry and company newsThe "ChatGPT moment" for robots could arrive within the next two to three years, said Wang Xingxing, CEO, CTO and founder of Chinese robot startup Unitree in his speech on Saturday's 2025 World Robot Conference. Wang noted that in the first half of this year, China's humanoid robot industry saw significant growth and gained worldwide attention. Including both complete machine manufacturers and component manufacturers, companies in the sector posted average growth of 50 to 100 percent. Unitree's humanoid robot G1, priced from CNY99,000, has become one of the most widely shipped humanoid robots worldwide, he added.  Nvidia and rival AMD have reportedly agreed to give the US government 15 percent of their revenue from chip sales to China, under an arrangement to obtain export licenses for the semiconductors. Separately, Nvidia's chips pose security concerns for China, said an article posted on WeChat by Yuyuan Tantian, an account affiliated with CCTV. "When a type of chip is neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe, we as consumers certainly have the option not to buy it," the article concluded. The company was recently summoned by the Cyberspace Administration of China for “serious security issues” concerning its H20 chips.Tech titan Huawei will reportedly announce this week a major advance in AI inference, the technology that runs the models. The breakthrough could reduce China's reliance on high-bandwidth memory technology, a critical bottleneck in the performance of AI models, boosting large-model inference speeds.China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier by subscribers, said first-half net income rose 5 percent from a year earlier to CNY84.2 billion. Telecom revenue rose 0.7 percent to CNY467 billion. The company said it expanded its customer base to over 1 billion mobile users, including 599 million 5G network customers.CATL announced on Monday that it has temporarily suspended mining operations at its Yichun project in East China’s Jiangxi province following the expiration of the mining license on August 9. CATL is currently applying for a renewal of the permit and will resume production as soon as it is approved, the battery giant said. Asia-Pacific highlightsThis summer, two-way tourism between China and Southeast Asia is booming, fueled by China's visa-free policies and Chinese tourists' enthusiasm for Southeast Asia travel. China was Malaysia's largest source of tourists outside ASEAN in the first five months of this year, with about 1.81 million visitors, up 38.8 percent year-on-year. Vietnam hosted 1.95 million Chinese tourists in the period, while Cambodia saw a 50 percent jump in Chinese tourists, topping 280,000. China has been the top source of tourists for Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia for three years, contributing over a quarter of their tourism revenue. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian visitors to China also surged this year. At Kunming airport, arrivals from Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore rose 406 percent, 119 percent and 273 percent respectively, compared with 2019.Global trade is estimated to expand 0.9 percent this year from a year earlier, up from the 0.2 percent contraction predicted in April but below the pre-tariff projection of 2.7 percent, the WTO said in its latest update released on Aug. 8. Higher international tariffs will slow trade growth to 1.8 percent next year, according to the new prediction. This compares with a 2.5 percent increase forecast in April. WTO added that Asian economies are projected to remain the largest positive driver of world merchandise trade volume growth in 2025, although their contribution in 2026 will be smaller than predicted in April.