Chinese PC maker Lenovo Q1 profit doubles, revenue up 22%
Net profit attributable to shareholders was $505 million, above the consensus estimate of $307.7 million.
The world's largest personal computer maker posted revenue of $18.8 billion for the three months ended June 30, beating analysts' expectations of $17.4 billion, according to LSEG data.
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Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
The tiny Pacific nation evading China's grip
Avenida de Hudi-Laran is one of the busiest roads in Dili, the capital of East Timor. On any given day, motorbikes, cramped minibuses and yellow taxis speed past restaurants, spas and furniture supply stores. But instead of the usual Portuguese or Tetum – the country's two official languages – many of the establishments boast Chinese names. The expansion of Chinese-owned businesses has grown to such an extent that most people refer to Hudi-Laran, meaning 'banana complex', as 'China-Laran' now. It's a sign of Beijing's increasing investment in the small country, but its level of influence appears to have its limits. At a time when more and more Asian countries are falling into debilitating debt traps that grant China sweeping leverage, East Timor is resisting – for now. It is one of the world's youngest countries, having gained independence in 2002 after hundreds of years as a Portuguese colony and more than two decades under Indonesian occupation. The nation, located around 430 miles north-west of Australia, makes up the eastern half of the island of Timor, sharing the land with Indonesia. Its strategic position in the contested Indo-Pacific and nearby shipping lanes make the country ripe for Chinese influence. 'We do not view China as a threat, least of all as an enemy,' José Ramos-Horta, East Timor's president, told The Telegraph, insisting his country remains neutral in the battle for control of the Pacific. East Timor sits crucially near the Second Island Chain, a series of islands stretching from Japan through Guam – a US territory with a key military base – to Indonesia's eastern islands. Although further from China than the First Island Chain, which includes Taiwan and the Philippines, the second chain is widely viewed as an emerging battleground of influence. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said in April that the US would be boosting investment in the outlying chain of islands. East Timor is also situated near the Ombai-Wetar Strait, a deep-water passage that's critical for movement between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Given its placement, China has attempted to increase its military presence on the island, proposing the construction of a radar facility in 2007, which it claimed would only be used to detect illegal fishing. However, a leaked US diplomatic cable revealed that the site would've allowed China to collect intelligence on American and Taiwanese military activity in the South China Sea, where Beijing has expanded its presence in recent years. The government in Dili rejected the proposal. East Timor relies mostly on security agreements with its neighbours: Australia and Indonesia. While open to participating in joint military drills with China, Mr Ramos-Horta said there was only so much East Timor could offer a country such as China when it comes to defence. 'It's a bit like an elephant inviting a mosquito for joint military exercises. The Chinese will take cruise missiles, we will take slingshots,' he said. The bulk of East Timor's relationship with China is economic, but it has opted for a different route to many other countries. Chinese aid has funded East Timor's presidential palace, foreign ministry and military headquarters, and Chinese state-owned companies built and currently control the national power grid and its major port. The country upgraded its ties with China in 2023 to a comprehensive strategic partnership, which opened the door to 'unlimited' economic cooperation, one expert told The Telegraph. Despite Beijing's economic involvement in such infrastructure projects prompting concern, East Timor has avoided the 'debt trap' that has destabilised so many others. China has a history of lending billions to vulnerable governments that struggle to repay the loans and eventually fall under its thumb. Such has happened in Sri Lanka, which owed China nearly $25 billion (£19.5 billion) before it defaulted and fell into its worst financial crisis in decades. But while Chinese firms have built key infrastructure in East Timor, the projects have been through private tenders. The south-east Asian country has never taken a loan from China, meaning its influence there 'remains limited', according to Loro Horta, East Timor's ambassador to China. In 2012, it came close to accepting a $50 million loan from China to upgrade its drainage system, but Dili rejected the proposal because it gave Beijing disproportionate control over which company would carry out the project. Instead, East Timor took out grants from partners such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, where there are fewer strings attached. The nation also follows a 'friends to all' policy, under which it receives foreign aid and investment from a wide range of partners – including Australia and the US – so it isn't entirely dependent on any one actor. China's grip looms Part of East Timor's ability to resist China's pull stems from its oil and gas revenue, but experts have said this could soon change. Despite being one of the poorest countries in the region by GDP per capita, it earns close to half a billion dollars in petroleum revenue annually, which funds nearly 90 per cent of its state budget. However, its main oil fields are predicted to be fully depleted within the next decade, meaning the country could be left bankrupt, according to Damien Kingsbury, a professor emeritus at Deakin University in Australia. The government is optimistic that more oil will be uncovered before it's too late, but others are worried that the impending economic crisis could push East Timor down the slippery slope towards greater dependency on China. 'Small countries such as East Timor risk having large investors and donors such as China swamp their local economy and thus lose a capacity to make independent economic decisions,' said Prof Kingsbury. 'China could end up having an outsized influence in policy making.' This has happened to countries in the Pacific before. The Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nauru have all switched recognition from Taiwan to China in the past decade after developing closer ties with Beijing. The Solomon Islands, historically one of the poorest countries in the Pacific, signed a security agreement with China in 2022, opening the door for Beijing to establish a military base in the region. However, East Timor's 'friends to all' policy could help it to avoid falling into a similar entanglement. 'I have no particular grounds for concern. China has a positive relationship with East Timor – it's significant but not one of the top donors by any means,' said Michael Leach, a professor at Australia's Swinburne University of Technology. 'The Timorese leadership have always been careful to balance their relationships in sensitive ways,' he added. East Timor's bloody past The fact that East Timor has remained relatively unscathed when it comes to China is also a result of its recent bloody history. Indonesian forces occupied the country between 1975 and 1999, and killed around 200,000 people – of a population of only around 600,000. They tortured and slaughtered civilians and resistance forces, in what many scholars have labelled a genocide. 'Indonesia killed a lot of people, a lot of people suffered, and a lot of people sacrificed tremendously in order for it to be a sovereign nation and so they value that sovereignty,' said Charlie Scheiner, a long-time researcher at La'o Hamutuk, one of East Timor's oldest and largest human rights NGOs. No one understands this better than the president and prime minister, who both led the struggle. Mr Leach explained that Xanana Gusmão, the prime minister, spent years fighting and was later imprisoned 'in pursuit of the dream of self-determination and independence', which 'informs a lot of his outlook today on maintaining Timorese independence'. For Mr Ramos-Horta, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, his experience travelling the world and courting diplomatic support made him 'no stranger to the sort of traps that small countries can fall into with foreign policy if they're not careful', according to Mr Leach. Experts agree that East Timor's relationship with China is likely to expand – especially economically – but it will probably not reach a point where there would be a risk to its sovereignty or independence. 'Timor will always be a democracy. We can never be a dictatorship because we are so disorganised and undisciplined – it's impossible to have one country dominate Timor,' insisted Mr Loro. 'Many have tried. They usually fail,' he added jokingly.
Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Telegraph
China plots robotaxi invasion of Britain
The Chinese robotaxis are coming. After taking over the streets of Beijing, self-driving vehicles are now poised to pour on to Britain's roads as soon as next year. Leading the charge is Baidu, a tech giant known as ' China's Google '. In a direct challenge to Elon Musk's Tesla, which has already started testing its full self-driving technology in the UK, Baidu has vowed to roll out thousands of cars across Europe. To do so, Baidu has partnered its Apollo Go taxi business with Lyft – one of Uber's main rivals – which plans to launch a self-driving taxi service in the UK in 2026. The Beijing-based tech giant has set its sights on Britain after being effectively locked out of America, where Chinese driverless software is to be banned from 2027. As a result, the expected flood of Chinese robotaxis risks putting Britain on a fresh collision course with the White House, although the potential for a geopolitical spat has far from halted interest from the Far East. In China, robotaxis are no longer a high-tech novelty. Companies including Baidu, WeRide, AutoX and all now offer self-driving shuttles that ferry passengers around without a driver. Encouraged by their success at home, they are targeting expansion in Europe. which is valued at $5bn (£3.7bn), has said it will begin trialling its service in Luxembourg, while WeRide has tested driverless buses in France and Spain. The start-ups, both of which are based in Guangzhou, have joined their Chinese peers in racing to tighten their grip on the global robotaxi market as adoption stutters across America. After making initial headway in the self-driving market, momentum among Silicon Valley giants has since tailed off. Uber notably abandoned its first effort to build an autonomous taxi in 2020 after a fatal crash, while Musk's long-standing promise to unleash an army of self-driving Teslas has so far been limited to Texas. Cruise, one of the most established robotaxi ventures, was shut down last year by its parent company GM, after an accident involving a woman who was dragged under the car's wheels. China's industry, on the other hand, appears to have moved up a gear. 'China's top players are pushing hard into overseas markets, potentially gaining a foothold before US rivals can fully scale', says Murtuza Ali, a technology analyst at Counterpoint Research. While Waymo, the US market leader, is offering paid robotaxi rides in Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco and Los Angeles in California; and in Austin, Texas, China is already operating robotaxis across 30 Chinese cities. Baidu's service is also live in 15 cities, while dozens more companies are launching pilot programmes. Stan Boland, former chief executive of UK autonomous driving business Five AI, says: 'There is a propensity in China to take more risks in terms of automated driving. 'There has been a much higher level of caution here in Europe when it comes to regulatory approvals.' In the UK, new rules brought in under Labour mean self-driving taxi and bus pilots could be live on UK roads from 2026. The first is expected to be Uber's trial with Wayve, a UK AI business that has raised more than $1bn. US-based Lyft is also preparing to test driverless cars across the UK following its deal with Baidu. Next up could be WeRide, which recently held talks with the UK's South China trade envoy, Trevor Lewis, about introducing autonomous vehicles in the UK. A WeRide spokesman says: 'The UK is set to be an important part of WeRide's international growth. WeRide looks forward to potential collaborations that support the UK's smart mobility ecosystem.' Concerns about expansion However, the rapid expansion of China's self-driving car industry will no doubt raise scrutiny regarding its safety record. Just last week, a vehicle operated by Baidu in the city of Chongqing fell into a roadside construction pit, flipping the vehicle on to its side. A woman escaped from the car unharmed. Elsewhere, a car developed by tech giant Xiaomi was also involved in a crash in March that killed three people. The vehicle smashed into a cement pole at 97mph while operating in a driver-assist mode, rather than driving entirely independently. The crash prompted Chinese officials to crack down on marketing claims about self-driving capabilities from the country's carmakers. As well as safety fears, the influx of Chinese robotaxis is also expected to trigger geopolitical scrutiny. The US department of commerce warned in January that China's self-driving cars left 'opportunities for data exfiltration and unauthorised vehicle manipulation ', backing up its decision to ban the technology. Similar concerns are now emerging in Britain. China hawks fear the arrival of self-driving vehicles from the Far East will create risks akin to Huawei, the telecoms company barred from UK networks over national security concerns. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader, warned China's vehicles 'will further enhance the control they have on the UK', adding they would be 'filled with internet of things' technology – sensors that can be used for surveillance. Luke de Pulford, director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, adds: 'Unless the UK wakes up soon, it will find itself having to foot a huge bill for removing high-risk equipment, like they had to over Huawei.' Yet despite such concerns, it appears that China's robotaxi experiment in Britain is only picking up pace.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘A structural dependence on heavy industry': can South Korea wean itself off fossil fuels?
GDP per capita per annum: US$34,640 (global average $14,210) Total annual tonnes CO2: 577.42.m (tenth highest country) CO2 per capita: 11.16 metric tonnes (global average 4.7) Most recent NDC (carbon plan): 2021 Climate plans: highly insufficient On a cool early morning on South Korea's east coast, Eunbin Kang pointed to a monument to a vanishing era. The 2.1GW Samcheok Blue power plant which came online in South Korea in January looms out of the headlands above a beach made internationally famous by a K-pop album shoot. It is expected to emit 13m tonnes of CO2 annually, while its lifespan could stretch beyond 2050, the year by which the country has pledged to reach carbon neutrality. The country was building coal-fired power plants, said Kang, an activist who heads the Youth Climate Emergency Action group and relocated to this city to oppose the facility, 'even as the climate emergency demands an immediate halt to fossil fuel expansion'. But Samcheok is not an outlier. It is a symbol of the stark climate contradiction at the heart of the world's 12th largest economy, celebrated for its technological prowess in semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries, yet among the top ten worst global climate performers. Despite South Korea's impressive climate pledges to reach net zero by 2050 with a 40% reduction in emissions from 2018 levels by 2030, fossil fuels still dominate its energy mix: 60% of electricity comes from coal and gas, while renewables make up just 9%, a quarter of the OECD average of 34%. Monopoly strangling transition At the heart of South Korea's climate failure is an energy model based on a state monopoly and central planning. Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco), the state-owned energy company, controls transmission, distribution and retail, while its subsidiaries dominate generation, creating structural challenges for competitors. These include Korea South-East Power, Korea Western Power and four other generation subsidiaries that together operate the vast majority of the country's coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, renewable energy developers face an obstacle course of regulatory barriers. Until recently, windfarm developers had to obtain 28 different permits from multiple ministries in a bureaucratic maze which created years of delays and significantly increased project costs, making many otherwise viable developments financially unfeasible. Progress was made in early 2025 with the passage of a long-awaited bill aimed at streamlining approvals, although the law won't take effect until 2026. Grid connection remains another hurdle. While electricity demand has grown by 98% over the past two decades, the transmission network has expanded by just 26%, but attempts to expand the grid have led to bitter local conflicts. In Miryang, South Gyeongsang province, the government tried to compel residents to sell up to clear space for transmission towers and people faced violent crackdowns during a six-year standoff. Currently, a dozen such projects are stalled in the country. In February 2025, the National Assembly passed a Power Grid Special Act aimed at expanding transmission. But civic groups warn the law reinforces the country's decades-old top-down model of infrastructure development, removing what few safeguards remained around public consultation and environmental review. 'We fully acknowledge that renewable energy transition requires transmission lines,' says Kim Jeong-jin from Friends of the Earth in Dangjin, where one project faced more than 10 years of delays due to local opposition. 'But the repeated conflicts arise because the electricity is not even for local use, yet it causes damage to our region without any regard for our voices.' The country's energy strategy is guided by the Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand, a 15-year forecast revised every two years. But the framework, which dates back to the 1960s, still prioritises centralised, large-scale power generation – a model built for coal and nuclear, and fundamentally incompatible with today's decentralised, flexible renewable technologies. Political volatility worsens the problem. Each five-year presidential term brings a policy reversal. For instance, in 2017, President Moon Jae-in announced a nuclear phase-out; his successor, the now disgraced ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol, reversed course five years later. This whiplash undermines any long-term planning for renewables – a problem faced by democracies around the world. The consequences are stark. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent fossil fuel prices soaring, Kepco incurred enormous losses. In 2022 alone, South Korea faced an extra 22tn won (£11.9 bn) in LNG power costs. Yet the government kept electricity prices artificially low, a political choice that pushed Kepco's debt to a staggering 205tn won (£111bn) by 2024. Despite this crisis, meaningful reform remains elusive. This entrenched monopoly system has effectively blocked the clean energy transition, with independent renewable producers struggling to gain meaningful access to a market dominated by fossil fuel interests. Carbon-intensive by design More broadly, South Korea's postwar rise relied on energy-intensive industries: steel, petrochemicals, shipbuilding and semiconductors. 'This structural dependency on heavy and chemical industries makes the energy transition extraordinarily difficult,' says Park Sangin, a professor of economics at Seoul National University. 'These industries are deeply embedded in the country's economic fabric and require vast amounts of stable, cheap electricity.' Powerful chaebols, or family-controlled conglomerates like Posco, Samsung and Hyundai, exert outsized influence on national policy. Their operations are supported by an electricity market designed for industrial stability, not climate mitigation. And the problem isn't just domestic; South Korea also finances and provides the infrastructure for fossil fuels globally. South Korean shipbuilders dominate the global market for LNG carriers. Public financial institutions also bankroll overseas fossil fuel projects. One that was recently approved, the Coral Norte gas project in Mozambique, is projected to emit 489m tonnes of CO2 across its lifecycle. At the same time, South Korea has emerged as one of the world's top importers of Russian fossil fuels, even as other nations cut ties. 'This financing directly contradicts [South] Korea's climate targets and makes a mockery of the Paris Agreement,' says Dongjae Oh, the head of the gas team at Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC). 'It exposes the country's hypocrisy – adopting climate targets at home while funding climate destruction abroad.' Even climate-friendly institutions continue backing fossil fuels. The National Pension Service (NPS), one of the world's largest pension funds, remains a major investor in coal and gas projects, despite a 2021 'coal-free' declaration. Three and a half years after this announcement, NPS only finalised its coal divestment strategy in December 2024, with a timeline that will delay implementation for domestic assets until 2030. Meanwhile, South Korea's market-based climate policies have failed to drive meaningful change. The emissions trading scheme (K-ETS) was supposed to put a price on carbon when it launched in 2015. But the system, which hands out free allowances to the largest companies, has instead created perverse incentives, according to campaign group Plan 1.5. The group carried out an analysis and found that South Korea's 10 largest polluters have made over 475bn won (£258bn) from selling unused carbon credits between 2015 and 2022. The system that was meant to make polluters pay has instead rewarded them. Next generation fights back There is growing awareness of a climate crisis as the country begins to experience increasingly severe weather. In 2023 46 people died in floods that displaced thousands. More recently, torrential rains have again caused at least 26 deaths, followed by a record-breaking heatwave. In March this year devastating wildfires swept across more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) – roughly 80% of the area of Seoul – killing 31 people and destroying thousands of homes. The country's disaster chief described the situation as 'a climate crisis unlike anything we've experienced before'. The prime minister, Kim Min-seok, has described the climate crisis as 'the new normal'. Now a new generation of South Koreans is challenging the status quo through legal action. In February, a group of children gathered outside Posco's office in Seoul. Among them was 11-year-old Yoohyun Kim, the youngest plaintiff in a groundbreaking lawsuit against Posco. The case aims to block the company's plan to reline an old coal-fired blast furnace, a move that would extend its life by 15 years and emit an estimated 137m tonnes of CO2. 'I came here during my precious winter break, my last as an elementary school student, because I want to protect all four seasons,' Yoohyun told supporters. 'Spring and autumn are disappearing with climate change – and with them, the chance for children like me to play freely outside.' The lawsuit is the first of its kind globally to target traditional blast furnace production. It follows a crucial ruling by South Korea's constitutional court last August which found that the government's climate policies violated the rights of future generations by failing to set legally binding targets for 2031-50. In March, residents and activists filed another suit over the government's approval of the world's largest semiconductor cluster in Yongin, backed by a 360tn won (£195bn) Samsung investment. The suit argues that the project's 10GW electricity demand and new LNG plants contradict climate regulations and corporate sustainability commitments. Kim Jeongduk, an activist from Political Mamas who participated in protests against the Samcheok Blue plant with her child, sees this as a generational struggle. 'Growing up in Pohang, I saw smokestacks fill the sky on my way to school every day. My throat would hurt from fine dust, and iron particles would collect on our windowsills,' she recalls. 'Adults always said: 'Thanks to Posco, our region survives.' I don't want my child to grow up with that same false choice between a healthy environment and economic survival.' The international data shows that South Korea's emissions peaked in 2018, and have been falling, with a brief jump after Covid, ever since. The government maintains that it is making progress on its climate goals, although critics argue that it is relying on some wonky calculations around its 2030 emission reduction target, confusing net with gross emissions. 'South Korea is actively pursuing bold reduction of coal power generation through prohibiting new permits for coal power plants and phasing out ageing facilities,' the ministry said in a statement, arguing that any remaining coal plants operating beyond 2050, such as those approved before the 2021 ban, would be addressed through 'carbon capture and storage technology and clean fuel conversion' in a way 'not inconsistent with our carbon neutrality commitment'. But independent analysis suggests these measures fall well short. 'The Basic Plan has no specific plan for how to expand renewable energy,' says Prof Park. 'There are vague targets, but no timeline, no locations. In stark contrast, the nuclear roadmap is extremely detailed and specific.' His recent research using the Global Change Assessment Model shows the current plan would fall short of meeting South Korea's 2030 emissions targets by approximately 6-7%. A more ambitious policy focused on offshore wind expansion and a complete phase-out of coal by 2035 could not only meet climate goals but reduce power sector emissions by 82% by 2035. When confronted with criticisms of its emissions accounting, South Korea's environment ministry defended its approach: 'Our emissions reduction target calculation method considers international regulations and major country cases. Countries like Japan and Canada use similar calculation methods for their 2030 NDCs,' a spokesperson said. The ministry added that although previous targets used the older 1996 IPCC guidelines, from 2024 they have begun using the updated 2006 standards for national greenhouse gas statistics. Back in Samcheok, Eunbin Kang looks out at the coal plant that now dominates the coastal landscape. 'I dream of a society where exploitation and plunder are replaced by decentralisation and autonomy,' she says. 'I want to contribute to spreading lifestyles and policies that allow everyone to lead a good life without requiring a lot of electricity or money.'
