How Xiaomi became a winner, crossing many industrial borders – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Xiaomi took off as a successful mobile phone company, but has moved into a wide range of industries, explains consumer expert Ashley Dudarenok on her weblog ChoZan. “Xiaomi EV matters because it shows how a consumer technology company can move into cars quickly, with pricing confidence and ecosystem depth,” writes Dudarenok.

Ashley Dudarenok:

Xiaomi EV has become one of China’s most important smart mobility stories because it integrates cars, phones, AIoT, retail, and software into a single consumer system. In 2025, Xiaomi reported 411,082 vehicle deliveries and RMB 103.3 billion (US$15.2 billion) in smart EV revenue.

For 2026, the company set a 550,000-unit delivery target, making Xiaomi Auto a serious force in China’s crowded EV market.

The point for global executives is clear. Xiaomi EV is leveraging consumer electronics discipline, founder-led brand trust, rapid product cycles, software familiarity, and a large connected-device base to reshape expectations for smart EVs in China…

Xiaomi EV matters because it shows how a consumer technology company can move into cars quickly, with pricing confidence and ecosystem depth. The company’s smart EV, AI, and new initiatives segment reached RMB 106.1 billion (US$15.6 billion) in 2025, with a gross margin of 24.3 percent and positive operating income of RMB 0.9 billion (US$132.4 million).

That financial shift changes the discussion around Xiaomi’s electric vehicles. Many new EV entrants struggle to move from attention to scale. Xiaomi reached a large volume quickly, then placed its auto business inside a wider technology platform that already includes phones, wearables, home appliances, internet services, and AI-enabled user interfaces.

This is why Xiaomi EV car demand differs from that of a normal car launch. Buyers respond to design and range, yet they also respond to a familiar Xiaomi logic. The company has trained consumers to expect strong specifications, accessible premium features, and frequent software improvements across devices.

Much more at ChoZan.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more consumer experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Why Chinese lost their trust in the US – Zhang Lijia

 

Zhang Lijia

 

In China, many citizens looked with admiration at the US, but those days are certainly over, says London-based journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus: A Novel, in an opinion piece at the South China Morning Post. Trump forced educated Chinese to rethink long-held assumptions about democracy, modernity, and the direction of history itself, she argues.

Zhang Lijia:

However, admiration has become more qualified. The US is increasingly seen not as a political role model but as a complex society grappling with many of the same challenges facing other countries: inequality, social division, political polarisation and diminishing trust in institutions. Trump became an unlikely catalyst for this shift.

The US remains powerful and influential, yet the country many educated Chinese once imagined from afar is now viewed less idealistically. More than any other recent American leader, Trump accelerated this transformation, narrowing a psychological distance that had existed for decades.

For many educated Chinese, the US no longer appears as the destination towards which all modern societies naturally evolve. Trump did not merely change the way Chinese people viewed America, he also forced them to rethink long-held assumptions about democracy, modernity and the direction of history itself.

More at the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Why the US banned China’s commercial firms for military connections – Winston Ma

 

Winston Ma

The US has put a row of larger Chinese commercial firms on its Pentagon blacklist for connections with China’s military, including Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, CATL, Unitree, Xiaomi, Huawei and chipmaker CXMT. “It signals that the definition of strategic technology has expanded dramatically, says Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU, across a range of media.

The Sri Lanka Guardian:

“When companies like Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, Tencent and Xiaomi are viewed
through a national security lens, it signals that the definition of strategic
technology has expanded dramatically,” said Winston Ma. He noted that the
updated Pentagon list aligns with broader regulatory shifts in the United
States, including earlier efforts by the Committee on Foreign Investment in
the United States to broaden its review of mergers and acquisitions involving
foreign-linked firms. That expansion, implemented in early 2025, was
designed to tighten oversight of investments from geopolitical competitors,
particularly China.
Ma added that these developments reflect a structural shift in how
commercial innovation is assessed within policy frameworks. “Both
developments reflect a broader reality: The boundary between commercial
technology and national security is becoming increasingly blurred,” he said.

More at the Sri Lanka Guardian.

Winston Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Why is Western retail missing the China game? – Bjorn Ognibeni

 

Digital strategy expert Bjorn Ognibeni explains why Western retail continues to miss what we are missing from the way China is developing, in an interview with Philipp Labrovsky at Omni Strategies. How the market economy and competition really make China strong.

Bjorn Ognibeni is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on China’s digital transformation? Do check out this list.

What China’s car makers teach the global auto industry – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

China’s car makers take the lead in developing their software-driven industry, and innovation expert Ashley Dudarenok explains how the global industry can learn from their Chinese competitors in her weblog.

Ashley Dudarenok:

In our China Economic Mega Report 2025, one of the clearest shifts in Chinese consumer technology is cars changing from a physical product into a software defined vehicles. The consequence shows in the numbers.

In the first two months of 2026, L2-level combined driver assistance penetration in China’s newly sold passenger vehicles reached 69.15%, up 10 percentage points year-on-year, per Ministry of Industry and Information Technology data.

The vehicle operating system has become the primary competitive variable in the world’s largest auto market. What China figured out first, and why that lead compounds, is what this article maps.

Much more at Ashley’s website.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Can China help Africa to develop – Harry Broadman

 

Harry Broadman

China, Africa, and the US are pretty different bedfellows when it comes to trade, says political analyst Harry Broadman, to Al Jazeera. China seems to have a better understanding of Africa, where the US was in the past mainly focused on opening the African markets for its own benefit, he adds.

Harry Broadman is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on China’s Belt&Road Initiative? Do check out this list.

How China helps Africa to develop – Shaun Rein

 

Shaun Rein

In the short run, the trade deficit between China and Africa might grow. Still, in the long run, China has a profound interest in helping Africa to develop its economy, including the abolishment of trade tariffs for most African countries, says business analyst Shaun Rein at Al Jazeera. Now China focuses on getting raw material, but its interest is broader, he adds.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Do you need more experts on China’s Belt&road Initiative? Do check out this list.

What AI model should your company adopt in 2026, Deepseek or Claude – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Innovation expert Ashley Dudarenok compares at her weblog Chozan two AI models your company can pick from in 2026. “DeepSeek vs Claude is not a comparison of two AI tools. It reflects two fundamentally different ways of deploying intelligence inside an organization,” she writes.

Ashley Dudarenok:

DeepSeek vs Claude is not a comparison of two AI tools. It reflects two fundamentally different ways of deploying intelligence inside an organization.

In 2026, the critical question is no longer which model performs better. It is how AI is integrated, scaled, and governed across real systems. DeepSeek and Claude represent opposite answers to that question.

McKinsey reports that 88% of companies now use AI in at least one business function, but only about one-third have actually scaled it across the organization. That gap—between using AI and scaling it—is exactly where the difference between DeepSeek and Anthropic shows up.

DeepSeek treats AI as a cost-efficient, flexible infrastructure layer that companies can shape and deploy internally. Claude treats AI as a controlled, enterprise-ready system designed for reliability and structured execution.

This distinction matters because companies are no longer experimenting with AI. They are deciding how deeply it should be embedded into operations, and that decision requires choosing an architecture, not just a model.

More at Chozan.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Deepseek vs Gemini – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Innovation expert Ashley Dudarenok looks at her website ChoZan into the differences between the two leading AI companies, Deepseek and Gemini. In detail, she examines where both companies work best, as they differ profoundly.

Ashley Dudarenok:

At a surface level, both models aim to compete at the frontier of AI capability. The difference shows up in how they are built and where they are meant to win.

DeepSeek stems from a Chinese engineering mindset that prioritizes efficiency and scalability in deployment. Teams behind it have roots in quantitative finance and high-performance computing. That influence shows in how aggressively they optimize for cost and inference efficiency.

Gemini, developed by Google, prioritizes differently. It is designed as a deeply integrated intelligence layer across products like Google Search, Gmail, and Google Workspace. The goal is not just performance but ecosystem dominance.

This creates a practical divide. DeepSeek vs. Gemini is not a purely model-based comparison. It is a comparison between an efficiency-first challenger and an ecosystem-first incumbent. A similar divide appears in DeepSeek vs ChatGPT when deployment model and control are compared directly.

More at ChoZan.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

How Trump played poker in Beijing, where the game was Pokemon – Victor Shih

 

Victor Shih

Political analyst Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy,  looks at the Trump state visit in Beijing. While Trump was losing his poker game, he should have been playing Pokémon, he explains in the Wire China.

Victor Shih:

It is not entirely wrong to think of Great Power politics as a card game, as Trump at times does. However, it is not a poker game, where hands are dealt randomly, and players both try to read the cards held by other players and, at times, bluff their way to victory.

The card game of geopolitics is in fact more akin to the Pokemon card game, where players still need to guess or collect intelligence on a competitor’s hand, but have much more discretion than in poker to expend resources and make tradeoffs in order to build the best position they can relative to their competitors.

The evidence on display in Beijing last week was that China has done this expertly — while the Trump administration still needs to realize that they are not even playing the right card game.

More at the Wire China.

Victor Shih is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

How China won the Trump visit in Beijing – Shaun Rein

 

Shaun Rein

Business analyst Shaun Rein looks back at the Trump visit in Beijing and explains why China has been the winner of this historic get-together, he tells George Galloway. He explains why China will never buy US technology anymore

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.