Supply, demand, capacity, technology and policy events with quantified transmission across 139 industries.
China's innovative drug out-licensing accelerated in 2026, with total deal value surpassing 120 billion US dollars, a 36% year-on-year increase. Upfront payments exceeded 10 billion US dollars. Deal structures showed steady growth in average transaction size, while both the value and share of upfront payments rose, with large transactions concluded frequently.
Nvidia, Palantir and Booz Allen Hamilton are pressing artificial intelligence suppliers for new data guarantees and reducing or halting use of the most advanced models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Palantir has persuaded Anthropic to agree to an irrevocable zero-data-retention guarantee across all of its models. For more sensitive business tasks, these companies are increasingly turning to internally developed AI models.
The global semiconductor industry generated record revenue of USD 425 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 31.4% from the previous quarter. First-half revenue totaled USD 752 billion. Growth was driven by enterprise artificial intelligence hardware, rising high-performance computing demand and sustained demand for high-bandwidth memory. Memory integrated circuits accounted for more than half of quarterly revenue, with DRAM, NAND and NOR products posting record results. Non-memory semiconductors rose 10% quarter on quarter, and microprocessor revenue increased 16%.
The Guangzhou Municipal People's Government General Office has issued the 15th Five-Year Plan for the city's marine economy, setting out measures for marine energy and marine pharmaceuticals and biological products. The plan calls for developing marine energy, focusing on megawatt-scale wave power devices and closed-cycle ocean thermal energy conversion systems, and promoting integrated marine energy applications in deep-water cage aquaculture, island water and power supply, offshore hydrogen production, and undersea data centers.
The Guangzhou Municipal People's Government General Office has issued a document on marine economy development, proposing deeper integration of large satellite internet constellations with the marine industry. The plan calls for the development of satellite internet terminals and chips designed to withstand marine environmental conditions.
ASML Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen said the AI boom has transformed customer sentiment, with EUV lithography capacity almost sold out through 2027 and High NA systems adopted by TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix and Intel. TSMC will adopt High NA from 2030, Samsung and SK Hynix from 2028, while Intel has processed over 1 million wafers. ASML raised its 2026 revenue guidance to 43 billion to 45 billion euros.
Ansteel Group has advanced technical work in the vanadium sector, with Pangang adopting a self-developed short-process technology for high-purity vanadium pentoxide that addresses the industry challenge of balancing high product quality with low-cost production. From April 2026, the technology was applied at the high-purity vanadium production line of the Panzhihua Vanadium Products Branch, significantly reducing product impurity content and cutting material consumption costs by more than 15% compared with before the research effort.
Ahead of Mid-Autumn Festival 2026, Wuliangye's Puwu retails at RMB 798 and wholesales at RMB 785, while Luzhou Laojiao's Guojiao retails at RMB 881 and wholesales at RMB 835. Guojiao's wholesale price fell from RMB 860 to RMB 825, within normal fluctuation. Wuliangye cut market supply to support prices, causing brief local shortages, as makers shifted to selling at a profit per bottle.
The Gansu section of the ±800 kV ultra-high-voltage direct current transmission project from Gansu to Zhejiang has been fully connected after the final conductor was strung across the Yellow River on September 14. The crossing, the project's only Yellow River span and a controlling node, runs 2.731 kilometers through steep terrain with strong valley winds. The 2,370-kilometer line links Wuwei converter station in Gansu to Shaoxing converter station in Zhejiang, passing through six provincial-level regions.
At the 2026 E-Commerce Conference in Beijing, Meituan's Chen Yifang outlined three shifts in service retail: integration, self-service and retailization. Service consumption accounted for 46.1% of per capita spending in 2025. Searches for experience classes rose 69.7%, supply of classes under 10 yuan grew 152%, and unmanned-format transactions jumped 604%. Meituan also showcased its AI business workstation, CatPaw.
In September 2026, the Linux Containers (LXC) virtualization suite added LoongArch container templates to its template server, giving the architecture official support in the LXC template source. The source previously supported x86-64, AArch64, AArch32 (ARMv7), and RISC-V. LoongArch becomes the fifth architecture to receive official support.
Hainan's aircraft maintenance industry, supported by free trade port policies, has expanded into aircraft dismantling, bonded remanufacturing and aviation asset management. Overseas aircraft maintenance business in Hainan grew ninefold over three years, according to Long Wentao, head of corporate development at Haikou Airport Aircraft Maintenance Engineering. Aircraft dismantling has become a new entry point for the business, which is extending into aviation asset management and remanufacturing.
TrendForce said in a September 14 memory-industry study that the NOR Flash market is undergoing its most significant supply-demand structural shift in nearly a decade. Average cumulative contract price increases reached 100%-120% in the first half of 2026, as AI applications absorbed most capacity and high-end demand upgraded, while suppliers added limited bit output. Price trends are expected to diverge by capacity in the second half.
At a special Zelda 40th anniversary Direct, Nintendo showed extensive gameplay footage of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake, a Switch 2 exclusive launching on November 5, 2026. Positioned as a full remake rather than a simple HD port, it adopts a nostalgic yet realistic fantasy art style, abandoning the cel shading of Tears of the Kingdom. The revealed art and gameplay changes have sparked discussion in the gaming community.
Memory makers have told the industry that DRAM shipments will contract sharply in 2027, with capacity for 2027 and 2028 almost fully booked. Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix have allocated all 2027 DRAM and HBM output, leaving most customers with only 60% to 70% of requested volumes. Team Group, whose DRAM products account for about 75% to 80% of its business, will prioritize safety stock and customer selection.
At the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services, overseas personnel safety and risk management for Chinese enterprises drew focus as geopolitical and social risks grow more complex. Leading insurers including China Pacific Property Insurance, Bank of China Insurance and Ping An Property Insurance are building closed-loop services spanning pre-warning, incident response and post-loss claims. China Pacific Property Insurance launched a strategic partnership with Control Risks, Bank of China Insurance rolled out export supply chain products, and Ping An Property Insurance introduced the Ping An 24 outbound safety package.
Photographs show multiple artificial intelligence companies buying NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards in bulk to build AI servers, using standard retail units rather than professional RTX PRO 6000 or data-center accelerators. The purchases have pushed some retail channel prices above 5000 dollars, more than double the 1999 dollar launch price. The cards shown are standard RTX 5090 models, not the RTX 5090D or later V2 variants, as high-end consumer GPUs increasingly serve as AI infrastructure hardware.
China's State Administration for Market Regulation has approved national standard GB/T 48140-2026 on automotive software quality and defect management. The standard applies PDCA cycle and risk-based thinking across the full software lifecycle, from requirements analysis and design through integration, validation, release, upgrade and maintenance. It requires automakers, software suppliers and supply-chain organizations to establish quality and safety management systems, implement 10 key quality assurance activities, set review points for five critical processes, and manage defects including recalls via over-the-air updates.
The Hong Kong Consumer Council analysed online prices for 222 packaged food and household items at three major supermarket chains, including ParknShop, Wellcome and AEON, between September 2025 and July 2026. It cited a 150-millilitre sesame oil buy-one-get-one offer priced at HKD 20 or HKD 22 per unit during the period, above the HKD 10 to HKD 14 before the promotion, giving a maximum discount of about 29%.
US most-favoured-nation drug pricing reform is moving forward, drawing global pharmaceutical market attention since 2025. As the policy advances, China has become a major asset base for global drugmakers responding to MFN pressure, and Chinese biotechnology companies are recording rising numbers and values of outbound licensing deals.
Costco has capped Kirkland Signature motor oil at two cases per customer per week, with its 10-quart full synthetic product rising from about USD 30 to about USD 58. The retailer's online platform limits item 997930 to two cases per order. The measures follow Gulf energy conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war, which have disrupted supply chains. Nearly 44% of US Group III base oil is imported directly from three Persian Gulf producers.
China's earthquake monitoring and forecasting department said on September 14, 2026 that the China Earthquake Networks Center is in talks with Apple to accelerate the integration of earthquake early warning information into Apple's iOS system. Users of Apple phones can currently receive alerts issued by the China Earthquake Administration through a WeChat mini program. The administration has publicly confirmed since at least 2025 that it is pushing for iOS integration, without disclosing the number, timing or stage of specific talks with Apple.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Emergency Management jointly issued a plan for the safety and emergency equipment industry through 2030, targeting an industrial scale of RMB 1.4 trillion in key fields, 10 competitive industrial clusters and 70 specialized parks. The sector has already surpassed RMB 1 trillion, but domestic production rates remain low for high-end sensors and industrial-grade control chips, while key materials and specialized robots still rely on imports.
As of September 13, 2026, 63 of 65 listed property-services companies had reported first-half 2026 results, with combined revenue of RMB153.347 billion. Nine companies each exceeding RMB5 billion contributed RMB101.792 billion, or 66.4% of the total, from 14.3% of the companies. China Merchants Property Operation reported revenue of RMB9.771 billion, up 6.64%, while Onewo recorded RMB19.112 billion, up 5.38%. Profit trends diverged across the sector.
Shanghai has 1,046 pet supply stores, with nearly 60 percent occupying 100 square metres or more and nearly 30 percent of extra-large outlets located inside shopping malls. The figures accompany a pet consumer market of RMB 312.6 billion a year, driven by 126 million cats and dogs nationwide.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and eight other departments jointly issued the 15th Five-Year Plan for the intelligent connected new energy vehicle industry on September 11, 2026. The plan sets a goal of consolidating the sector's full industrial-chain advantages and joining the ranks of world automotive powers by 2030, includes quantitative targets such as new energy vehicle penetration and energy consumption, and writes capacity-warning and adjustment measures into an industry five-year plan for the first time.
Apple is broadening third-party game controller support for the iPhone as processor performance improves and console and PC titles such as Resident Evil, Death Stranding and Assassin's Creed Mirage arrive on the device. Dedicated controllers from Backbone, Razer, GameSir and Rotor Riot are increasing, many with clamp-on designs that turn the phone into a handheld-style device. Cloud gaming services including Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce NOW are also driving controller use, though the mobile game library remains limited compared with consoles and PCs.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Millennium Square in central Leeds in September 2026 to oppose Microsoft's plan to build three large data centres at Skelton Grange for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The campaign group No Leeds Data Centre organised the protest, and a petition has collected about 40,000 signatures. Labour MP Richard Burgon joined the protest and has tabled a cross-party parliamentary motion on pausing approvals for new AI data centre projects. The project has conditional planning permission but still requires further approvals.
Tesla unveiled the production version of its Cybercab in Austin, Texas, and Elon Musk confirmed the vehicle's new drive motor uses no rare-earth metals, with range unaffected, volume reduced 18% and weight cut 25%. Tesla has not disclosed the motor's full structure, material grades or efficiency curve. Chinese suppliers including Hengdian DMEGC, Longsheng Technology and JL MAG have reported varying progress on rare-earth-free motor technology.
Global server vendor revenue reached 166.3 billion USD in the second quarter of 2026, rising 52% year on year and 35.7% quarter on quarter, according to an IDC report. The figure surpasses the previous quarterly high of 125.3 billion USD set in the fourth quarter of 2025, making it the highest single-quarter total on record.