Weekend Long Read: How China’s Pampered Pets Fuel a $40 Billion Market

Xi meets business leaders: President Xi Jinping met with international business leaders on Friday morning, where he highlighted support for foreign investment, according to a Xinhua report. China will expand opening-up with a focus on lowering the market access thresholds; ensure foreign-invested enterprises in China enjoy equal treatment; and strengthen communication with foreign businesspeople, Xi said. The country will also make trade and investment as convenient as possible for foreign-invested enterprises and protect their legitimate rights and interests. The president also stressed his support for multilateralism and economic globalization. The meeting comes against the backdrop of a weak domestic economy and heightened global trade tensions, with recent tariff hikes on Chinese exports by a U.S. administration that is proving capricious in its foreign economic policy. More than 40 chairpersons, CEOs and business association representatives attended the meeting, including those from FedEx Corp., Mercedes-Benz Group AG, HSBC Group, SK Hynix Inc. and Saudi Aramco.

Tencent gaming: Tencent Holdings Ltd. is set to invest a whopping 1.16 billion euros ($1.25 billion) in a new unit of French video game publisher Ubisoft Entertainment SA. The subsidiary will house flagship titles including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. The deal, announced Thursday in Paris, is expected to be wrapped up by the end of the year and will give Tencent approximately 25% of the unit, valuing it at around 4 billion euros. The Chinese tech giant has a long-standing partnership with Ubisoft, acting as the agent for several of its PC and mobile games in the Chinese market. Since 2018 Tencent has invested a combined 669 million euros in Ubisoft and as of March last year had a 9.99% stake in the company. The latest deal is an extension of a central strategy for Tencent, which has invested billions of dollars in international gaming firms and in 2024 grew its overseas revenue 9% year-on-year to 58 billion yuan ($8 billion).

Li Auto open source: Li Auto Inc. will become the world’s first car company to make its in-vehicle operating system open source. The Chinese electric-vehicle (EV) maker plans to gradually make available its self-developed Halo OS from the end of April, Li Auto Chairman and CEO Li Xiang said at a technology conference in Beijing on Thursday. The firm began working on the system in 2020 and invested more than 1 billion yuan ($137.7 million) in research and development before installing it in vehicles last year, Li said. The open-source release, which will include a smart driving OS, could save other automakers millions of dollars in developing or licensing their own systems. This could potentially disrupt the industry at a time when smart driving tech has become a key battleground for carmakers, with market leader BYD Co. Ltd. announcing in February plans to include its autonomous driving software in all its models free of charge.