An investigation into ex-Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan and booming sales of pricey AI companion robots underscore Asia’s volatile shifts in power and tech.
From Hong Kong, the past week has offered a sharp reminder of how quickly reputations — political and corporate — can change across Asia’s tech and finance landscape.
A striking development in China’s political circles was news of an investigation into Huang Qifan, the former mayor of Chongqing, for suspected corruption. Huang served under two once-powerful Communist Party leaders, Bo Xilai and Sun Zhengcai, both later brought down in high-profile purges. For years, Huang appeared to have survived political storms that swallowed many of his peers. In 2019, at an event in Shanghai, I overheard Huang in conversation with the chair of a major Chinese private company. The executive bluntly asked him what had kept him safe while “everyone around you keeps getting arrested.” Huang laughed, gave a noncommittal answer, and suggested he might one day write a book about his experiences. That book has yet to appear — and now, seven years later, his long-held aura of invulnerability has been punctured.
On the business front, the week also underscored how fast China’s consumer-tech ambitions are moving — and how much money people are willing to spend on new forms of digital companionship. At an electronics exhibition organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, mainland Chinese robotics companies once again dominated the floor. Among the most discussed products was UBTech’s humanoid “companion” robot: a life-size female figure styled with long curled hair, carefully applied makeup, a designer-inspired skirt suit and shimmering high heels. From a distance, it could pass for a human posing like a social media influencer; close up, silicone limbs made clear it was not.
The device is not a dancer or an industrial robot. It is, in effect, a doll paired with conversational AI — yet the market is already responding. UBTech’s global sales director said the product has begun shipping in China. A male version is selling better than the female model, and the customer base is heavily weighted toward young women. Buyers are paying around 130,000. UBTech believes Japan could ultimately become its largest overseas market, although the company is still pursuing the certifications required to sell there.
Japan is also drawing interest from the United States’ leading AI developers — not just hardware makers. Anthropic is preparing to establish its first dedicated data center in the country, according to Nikkei reporting. The buildout will be handled by NTT Data Group, which ranks as the world’s third-largest data center operator by market share. The planned site in Osaka prefecture would be among Japan’s biggest and could cost about 1 trillion yen ($6.3 billion), with the total potentially rising into multiple trillions of yen once advanced AI servers are included. One major obstacle is electricity: the project is expected to weigh options such as on-site power generation and fuel cells to ensure sufficient supply.
Meanwhile, China is pushing hard to reduce dependence on foreign semiconductors as it treats AI as a national strategic priority. Domestic production of AI chips has more than doubled this year, driven by groups including Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu and Cambricon. Even so, supply remains far short of demand. Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent are expected to more than double capital spending this year to roughly 700 billion yuan ($104 billion), according to people familiar with their plans. Domestic AI-chip supply is forecast to reach up to 3.5 million units this year — still not enough for China’s largest technology companies.
Why it matters
Asia’s AI boom is colliding with hard constraints: political risk at home, power limits in key markets like Japan, and persistent chip shortages despite rapid domestic ramp-ups in China. The stakes span consumer products, data-center infrastructure and national industrial policy. Investors and companies will be watching whether chip supply and electricity availability can keep pace with the region’s accelerating AI spending.