☕️ Good morning, friends,

Germany’s Deutsche Bahn wanted to order electric buses from the Chinese manufacturer BYD. 👇🏻

As soon as the news leaked, the unions showed up and demanded more “local patriotism”.

Makes sense in a way: better quality for a lower price would not really fit Deutsche Bahn’s strategy so far.

🤝 P.S. With our partner of the week, Cathy Tax, everything is on point from quality to price to communication.

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Highlights: Hong Kong is sharpening its tech profile. The exchange has launched the HKEX Tech 100, its first in-house technology index, tracking 100 of the region’s largest tech stocks.

With E Fund coming on board as the ETF issuer, mainland capital now gets direct access to Hong Kong’s tech sector.

TOP BIT

💊 Pfizer hunts its fat-killer in China

Pfizer is spending up to 2.1 billion USD to buy into YaoPharma, hoping to finally get its own weight-loss pill onto pharmacy shelves.

The US drugmaker is acquiring global rights to an oral GLP-1 developed in China. After two misfires in its own pipeline, this is the latest attempt to regain momentum in the fast-growing obesity drug race.

Details

💰 A pill-sized mega-deal: 150 million USD upfront, up to 1.94 billion USD tied to clinical success, approvals and sales. For a project in the earliest clinical stage, Pfizer is putting down a striking amount of money.

🧪 How it works: YP05002 is designed as a pill rather than an injection. YaoPharma will complete Phase 1 in Australia before Pfizer takes over development, manufacturing and global commercialization.

🧬 Combo thinking: Pfizer plans to pair the pill with its own compound PF-07976016. The goal is a tablet combination that can compete with injectable blockbusters like Wegovy or Zepbound.

🏭 A giant market: Drugmakers are pouring billions into new obesity-drug factories worldwide. Analysts expect the global obesity market to reach around 100 billion USD per year by 2030.

Background

Despite political tensions, collaborations between US pharma giants and Chinese developers continue because of speed and cost advantages.

Pfizer’s decision to buy into a very early, but promising, Chinese molecule and plug it into its own combo strategy shows how deeply interconnected modern pharma pipelines have become.

📊 All Details & Data: CNBC, BioSpace, MSN

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That is why we let Cathy handle all our money business. 👇🏻

Here is why we love working with her:

She takes care of everything that keeps us awake at midnight: accounting, tax filing, bookkeeping, HR, payroll, visas and the mountain of paperwork that comes with doing business in China.

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NUMBER OF THE DAY

That’s how much Chinese micro-dramas generated overseas in just the first eight months of this year.

📱 Short, fast, global: 90% of the world’s top-20 mini-drama apps by revenue come from Chinese companies. Daily series launches, algorithm-driven storytelling, and industrial-scale production are powering the export boom.

🎬 Cinema in your pocket: Domestically, micro-dramas generated USD 6.9 billion in the same period, surpassing traditional box-office revenues. More than 1.3 million jobs now depend on the industry.

Watch: Micro-dramas are projected to generate a total of $11 billion in global revenue by 2025. With localized content in English, Korean, and beyond, micro-dramas are quietly becoming China’s most scalable cultural export.

MARKET BIT

💰 Silicon Maharaja: Microsoft’s $17.5B bet on Asia’s tech future

💰 Mega Bet on India: Microsoft will invest around $17.5B in AI and cloud infrastructure by 2029. It is the company’s largest-ever deal in Asia and adds to the $3B investment announced in January.

🏗️ Hyperscale Across the Subcontinent: Mega data centers are being built in Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai, among others. The first new cloud region is scheduled to go live in mid-2026. The goal is to create Microsoft’s largest cloud footprint outside the US.

🤖 AI meets 1.4 billion users: India is becoming a global testbed for AI in government, industry and services. Millions of highly trained engineers and extremely low data costs make the country an ideal market for rapid AI scaling.

⚔️ Big Tech Infrastructure Race: Google is planning $15B, AWS has already committed $12.7B. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are now in an open race for data centers, fiber networks, power supply and AI platforms.

🏛️ Strategic servers: These investments are also a sovereignty strategy. India aims to build its own cloud and AI capabilities to reduce dependence on both China and the West at the same time.

Background

From South Korea and China to India and Southeast Asia, Big Tech and governments are pouring tens of billions of dollars into data centers, fiber networks, and AI infrastructure.

Microsoft alone has now committed a total of $20.5 billion to AI and cloud investments in India. In October, Google announced it would invest $15 billion over the next five years to build its own AI hub in the country. At the same time, New Delhi is pushing its “AI-first” strategy with subsidies for chips, data centers, and local AI models.

👉🏻 Full Story: Bloomberg, BusinessTimes, DealStreetAsia

HEAD OF THE DAY

🇯🇵 Haruo Naito 内藤晴夫

💊 Japan’s pharma father

Haruo Naito has led the mid-sized Japanese drugmaker Eisai into the global top tier.

👉🏻 Haruo Naito took over Eisai in 1988, at a time when the company was far from the world’s leaders.
Today it ranks among the global top 20 and generates more than half of its revenue outside Japan.

His guiding idea:

• Employees should spend time with patients before they start researching a disease.

With this mindset, he drove breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s research and oncology and prioritized access to medicines in developing and emerging countries over traditional business logic.

HIGHLIGHTS

🚢 COSCO orders a green mega fleet: The Chinese shipping giant placed a record $7 billion order for 87 new vessels with state-owned shipbuilder CSSC, focusing on larger, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly ships. This year, COSCO has already added dozens of bulk carriers and supertankers to secure African raw-materials projects and further expand its global supply-chain clout. A big part of the deal will be settled in cross-border renminbi, underscoring COSCO’s role in pushing wider use of China’s currency in international trade.

🤖 Mercedes sends robotaxis into the desert: The automaker is partnering for the first time with Chinese autonomy specialist Momenta, bringing Level-4 robotaxis based on the new S-Class onto the roads of Abu Dhabi, operated by Lumo Mobility. The project runs on Mercedes’ new MB.OS platform. Mercedes keeps control of the core operating system, and Momenta supplies the highly complex self-driving algorithms.

🚕 Uber bets on the world’s largest taxi market: The U.S. ride-hailing giant plans to invest more than $2 billion in Japan over the next five years to massively expand taxi partnerships and delivery services. Japan’s taxi industry is the largest in the world, yet also one of the most conservative and least digitized. In 2025 alone, more than $400 million has already flowed into the market. Beyond core mobility, Uber is also eyeing robotaxis and new AI data-labeling gigs for drivers to earn extra digital income on the side.

COUNTRY READS

🇮🇳 India is requiring IndiGo to cut its flight schedule by 10 percent after massive cancellations, in order to stabilize operations. More here.

🇳🇵 Nepal’s anti-corruption authority is suing 55 politicians over the allegedly overpriced construction of the China-funded airport. More here.

🇯🇵 Osaka is seeing a sharp drop in Chinese visitors after Beijing advised against travel to Japan due to political tensions. More here.

BITS TO DO

✅ Drink green tea. It’s better than any weight-loss pill.*
✅ Cook super tasty and healthy Asian food.
✅ Build your own home gym entirely from Temu products (or maybe don’t).
✅ Train with this fitness coach in Japan.
✅ Lean back and let Cathy handle your taxes in China.**

_{*Yes, it’s an affiliate link. No, you won’t pay more. But it helps support asiabits. Thanks ;)
** A message from our partner.}

FORTUNE COOKIE

🦾 Rowdy Robot

Not sure it’s a great idea to teach robots MMA…

MORE ASIABITS

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