☕️ Good morning friends,

Asian retirees are an underestimated force. If you've ever watched Chinese seniors dancing in the park, you know what we're talking about.

Now they're all suddenly becoming OpenClaw fans... More on that in today's Top Bit.

Also in today's issue:

• People's Bank of China buys more gold again

• Google negotiates data center in South Korea

• Japan shares rare earth know-how with Malaysia

P.S. Many are asking us right now: How do you still get to Asia? We've compiled the current flight routes for you on a map.

Asia's worst week since 2020: The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped -6.4%, its worst weekly decline since the Covid crash in March 2020. Oil surged +18% to $85 per barrel, jet fuel in Singapore hit an all-time high. South Korea secured an emergency deal for 4 million barrels of oil from the UAE.

TOP BIT

Why all of China is suddenly breeding "AI lobsters"

A bizarre spectacle is currently unfolding in China's metropolises:
Thousands of people – from students to 60-year-old retirees – are standing in line for hours to get software called OpenClaw installed.

Nearly 1,000 people gathered in front of Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters to get the AI agent installed.

The reason: Installing it is technically complex. Tencent engineers handled it for free.

What is OpenClaw? 🦞

Unlike ChatGPT, which primarily chats, OpenClaw is an autonomous agent. It was developed by Austrian Peter Steinberger and recently acquired by OpenAI.

• Capabilities: OpenClaw can independently read and respond to emails, create presentations, conduct stock analyses, or write code – directly in the user's system.

• GitHub record: With 250,000 stars in just four months, it's the fastest-growing open-source project in history (faster than Linux).

Government jumps on board

Premier Li Qiang mentioned AI agents for the first time in the Government Work Report:

Security concerns

Despite the hype, concerns about security are growing. Since OpenClaw requires full control over the operating system, the risks are enormous.

1. The email disaster: A researcher from the Meta team recently shared how her "lobster" suddenly started deleting emails en masse without her being able to stop it – only physically turning it off helped.

2. State warning: China's Ministry of Industry (MIIT) issued a security warning on February 5. Many instances are extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks and data leaks due to misconfigurations.

3. Hardware hunger: Xiaomi warns of massive heat generation and shortened battery life when using AI agents on smartphones.

📊 All details & data: Global Times, The Paper (cn), Indian Express

MARKET BIT

Gold above $5,000: China's PBOC buys for the 16th month straight

The People's Bank of China bought more gold in February, extending its purchasing streak to 16 consecutive months since November 2024.

Addition: 30,000 troy ounces, bringing total reserves to 74.22 million fine troy ounces.

The details

• China's gold as a share of total reserves: roughly 8.5%.

• For comparison: the US sits at 75%, Germany at 70%, Russia above 20%.

• Global central bank average: 15-20%.

For the world's second-largest economy, 8.5% is remarkably low. Analysts have long suspected China holds far more gold than officially reported - estimates range up to 4,000-6,000 tonnes versus the stated roughly 2,300.

Globally, central bank buying slowed sharply in January: just 5 tonnes, compared to the 12-month average of 27 tonnes.

Counter-trend from Europe: Poland's central bank chief Adam Glapinski proposed liquidating parts of the country's 550-tonne gold reserves to generate $13 billion for defense spending. The proposal briefly knocked $70 off the gold price. Russia and Venezuela have also offloaded gold recently.

Buying while others sell

Gold has traded above the $5,000 mark since late January.
Current price: around $5,100 per ounce, down from an all-time high of $5,595 in January.

The main driver: escalating Middle East tensions. After joint US-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, investors rotated heavily into safe-haven assets.

China's buying follows a different logic: The PBOC is systematically diversifying away from the dollar. As long as geopolitical tensions persist and the dollar's role as sole reserve currency is questioned, this trend is unlikely to change.

👉 Sources: Bloomberg, BusinessTimes, Yahoo Finance

FOUNDERS INSIGHTS

Tuo Liu designed robotics labs for MIT and Harvard. Then he moved back to Shenzhen.

The reason: every part he needed for his labs in Boston came from China. Zero manufacturers in the US, over 50 in Shenzhen alone. An engineer there costs $50K a year, three times less than in the US.

Tuo spotted the pattern: raise money in San Francisco, build in Shenzhen, sell to the world.

Today he runs Robotuo, an open-source community with 270+ robotics founders worldwide. His maps showing 150+ humanoid companies in China went viral on X.

His takeaway: a single Chinese city has more robotics companies than all of America.

Here's the full episode:

📺 YouTube 
🎧 Spotify 
🎧 Apple Podcasts

HIGHLIGHTS 

🇨🇳 Nexperia dispute escalates into chip war: China's Ministry of Commerce warns the Netherlands it bears "full responsibility" if the conflict between Nexperia and its Chinese subsidiary triggers another global semiconductor crisis. Last week, the Dutch headquarters has locked all office accounts of its China-based employees, severely disrupting operations. The dispute had already impacted the global supply of automotive chips.

🇰🇷 Google in talks for South Korean data center: Following Seoul's release of high-precision map data, Google is negotiating with LG Uplus on a joint data center. The data must be processed on domestic servers before being transferred abroad. This ends a 19-year standoff over Korea's 1:5,000-scale map data. Google Maps still cannot offer car or pedestrian navigation in South Korea.

🇯🇵 Japan shares rare earth know-how with Malaysia: Tokyo is helping Malaysia build its own rare earth refining capacity. The country already hosts the Lynas plant in Kuantan, the only large-scale processing facility outside China. In 2025, Lynas became the first non-Chinese company to commercially produce dysprosium oxide there. The cooperation is part of Japan's strategy to diversify critical mineral supply chains.

🇨🇳 Pop Mart sues 3D printer company over Labubu: The toy maker is going after Bambu Lab because users shared printable Labubu replicas on its MakerWorld platform. Bambu Lab was founded by former DJI engineers and has nearly 10 million monthly active users. Labubu accounts for over 30% of Pop Mart's revenue. In 2025, Chinese customs seized 1.83 million counterfeit Labubu products.

MORE ASIABITS

• Free guide: AI Automation for Beginners

• Humanoid Robotics Report: The $6 Billion Bet

• Interactive tool: China Dependency Index™

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