---
date: 2026-06-22
subject: "NEA names AI compute, 5G as new power loads | Microsoft weighs DeepSeek for Copilot | Yuanxin opens new Qianfan round"
---


**China's National Energy Administration (NEA) flagged AI compute and 5G** as dominant new sources driving electricity demand under the 15th Five-Year Plan, projecting national compute electricity use will rise by more than 100 billion kilowatt-hours per year from 2026 through 2030 on top of a 2025 data center base of 170 billion kilowatt-hours. **MOFCOM, NDRC and Finance Ministry released** a State Council Action Plan for Stabilizing and Optimizing the Use of Foreign Investment, directing free trade zones and service sector pilot cities to develop scenario-specific negative lists for cross-border data outflow and sets industry standards for "important data" across sectors including telecom, automotive and aerospace. **Microsoft is evaluating DeepSeek V4** as a lower-cost alternative for its Copilot Cowork agent system, with DeepSeek V4 Flash priced at roughly 1/180th of Claude Fable 5 on output tokens.

# 1. Top Stories

- **NEA names AI compute and 5G base stations as the dominant new sources of electricity demand under the 15th Five-Year Plan** — The National Energy Administration (NEA), China's grid planning regulator under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), held a Q&A on June 22 about its implementation rules for the minimum renewable energy consumption quota system and named compute facilities, 5G base stations and electric vehicle charging infrastructure as the new categories driving power demand growth, per ITHome citing NEA officials. NEA projects national compute electricity use will rise by more than 100 billion kilowatt-hours per year on average during the 15th Five-Year Plan that runs from 2026 through 2030, on top of a 2025 data center electricity base of 170 billion kilowatt-hours, or 1.6% of national power use, from an earlier NEA disclosure. The rules add compute, 5G and EV charging load to the categories that count toward each region's minimum renewable energy consumption quota, so new demand must be matched by additional clean energy purchases under the national consumption responsibility framework. Compute power use at the eight national integrated compute network hub nodes has grown at an annual rate of about 39.5% over the past three years, well above the national electricity demand growth rate. [ITHome](https://www.ithome.com/0/966/952.htm)

- **MOFCOM, NDRC and Finance Ministry issue State Council foreign investment plan with cross-border data and FTZ measures** — The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), China's economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued a State Council approved Action Plan for Stabilizing and Optimizing the Use of Foreign Investment on June 22, per ITHome. The plan tells free trade zones and national service sector pilot cities to develop scenario-specific and field-level negative lists for cross-border data outflow, and to drive industry-by-industry national standards for identifying "important data" in sectors including industry, telecom, geographic information, automotive, pharmaceuticals, seed breeding, aerospace and civil aviation. Seeking to attract foreign R&D, the plan grants foreign-invested enterprises equal treatment in consumer stimulus programs and bars local officials from excluding foreign brands or firms from such programs, expands cross-border financing facilitation quotas for key foreign firms and directs accelerated easing of restrictions in biotech and wholly foreign-owned hospitals. [ITHome](https://www.ithome.com/0/966/905.htm)

- **Microsoft evaluating DeepSeek V4 as low-cost alternative for Copilot Cowork** — Microsoft globally launched Copilot Cowork, an AI agent system that runs tasks across Outlook, Teams and Excel and that more than half of Fortune 500 firms have deployed during the preview period. Microsoft is evaluating bringing in DeepSeek V4 as a lower-cost model option for Copilot, per Leiphone citing Axios. Pricing on Copilot Cowork will shift from a flat $30 per month subscription toward usage-based metering with separate pay-as-you-go and pre-purchased capacity tiers, on top of the base Microsoft 365 Copilot fee. The cost gap behind the move is wide: Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 prices at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, while DeepSeek V4 Flash sells at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens, a roughly 180 times spread on output cost. Microsoft Azure AI Foundry already routes between GPT, Claude, Gemini and DeepSeek under a multi-model approach. [Leiphone](https://www.leiphone.com/category/ai/66F6EZoPUvuBgKtF.html)

- **Qianfan operator Yuanxin Satellite opens new equity round with up to 20% stake and 5 billion yuan ($700 million) per-investor minimum** — Shanghai Yuanxin Satellite Technology, the builder of China's largest commercial satellite internet project Qianfan, opened a new equity financing round with a disclosure window of June 22 to July 17, 2026, per Securities Times. The round offers a stake of up to 20% to a maximum of three new investors, with a minimum investment of 5 billion yuan ($700 million) per individual investor or consortium and net proceeds set by market demand. Yuanxin's total assets reached 10.18 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) as of Nov. 30, 2025 against cumulative net losses of about 1.9 billion yuan ($270 million) across the four years through that date, reflecting the heavy build phase of the constellation. Qianfan had deployed 108 networking satellites by early 2026, with a target of 324 cumulative satellites on orbit by the end of 2026 and a long-term plan above 15,000 satellites, per Communications World. [Wallstreetcn](https://wallstreetcn.com/livenews/3122659) [Securities Times](https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/3672085.html) [state-affiliated] [Communications World](https://www.cww.net.cn/article?id=607982) [state-affiliated]

- **Shanghai Chaosi begins mass production of 12-inch square silicon wafers for next-generation AI chip CoPoS packaging** — Shanghai Chaosi began mass production and customer delivery of 12-inch square silicon wafers in May 2026, per parent company Superchip. The wafers serve as substrates for the next-generation Chip-on-Panel-on-Substrate (CoPoS) advanced packaging platform that high-performance AI compute chips are expected to adopt. CoPoS is a panel-style advanced packaging format that replaces conventional 300 millimeter round silicon wafers with square wafers to reduce edge waste as AI chip dies grow physically larger, with TSMC widely expected to begin CoPoS volume production around 2028. Chaosi set up dedicated teams covering crystal growth equipment, processes, quality control and supply chain to qualify the new wafer type, and is now the named main supplier of the square wafer to its lead customer. Industry expectation puts broader CoPoS volume ramp in 2 to 3 years. Chaosi was founded in 2008 and has shipped 200 millimeter and 300 millimeter integrated circuit silicon wafers, including polished, epitaxial and advanced packaging specialty wafers, to most leading global integrated circuit makers. [ITHome](https://www.ithome.com/0/966/920.htm)

# 3. AI & Foundation Models

- **JD.com releases JoyAI-VL-Interaction as an open source real-time video language model ** — JD.com describes it as the first fully open source real-time video visual-language interaction model and system, with day-zero native support from the open source vLLM-Omni inference framework, per ITHome. The model is designed to handle continuous video streams and to generate output on its own rather than wait for a user query, and can offload heavy reasoning, code generation or tool calls to a background model. JD reports JoyAI-VL-Interaction won 77.6% of 58 blind real-user comparisons against ByteDance's Doubao video assistant and 87.9% against Google's Gemini video assistant on tasks tied to visually triggered active response and streaming use. JD released the code, model weights and dataset on GitHub and Hugging Face and positioned the model for security monitoring, livestream commentary and AI smart glasses, among other applications. [ITHome](https://www.ithome.com/0/967/058.htm)

- **Alibaba releases video generation model HappyHorse 1.1** — Alibaba released HappyHorse 1.1, the updated version of its video generation model, with improvements across motion fidelity, instruction following and audio, per Leiphone. The model accepts up to nine simultaneous character or scene reference images, adjusts voice cadence and pacing to match depicted emotion, and supports prompt-described background sound effects. The new version reduces previously flagged "oily skin" and oversharpening artifacts and preserves fine facial detail such as pores and laugh lines for short drama and advertising use. [Leiphone](https://www.leiphone.com/category/industrynews/dDawO7xmw3NKpAb9.html)

- **Tsinghua open source Spatial-TTT spatial intelligence model outperforms Gemini and GPT-5 on long video benchmarks** — A Tsinghua University team led by doctoral student Liu Fangfu had the Spatial-TTT model accepted at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2026, per QbitAI. The 2 billion parameter open source model uses a "test-time training" technique that updates a portion of the model's weights as new video frames arrive, treating those updated weights as a compressed long-term spatial memory rather than relying on an ever larger context window. Tsinghua's team reports Spatial-TTT outperforms larger closed source models including OpenAI's GPT-5 and Google's Gemini 3 Pro on the published spatial reasoning benchmarks cited in the paper and can process video streams up to 120 minutes long. [QbitAI](https://www.qbitai.com/2026/06/437235.html)

# 4. Chips & Semiconductors

- **SSE clears FPGA designer Anlogic's 1.262 billion yuan ($180 million) private placement for advanced node R&D** — The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) issued a review opinion on June 22 approving Anlogic Information Technology's private share placement to specific investors, finding the application met issuance and listing conditions, per Yicai. Anlogic plans to raise up to 1.262 billion yuan ($180 million) across two projects: 726 million yuan ($100 million) for R&D on very large scale field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) chips on an advanced process platform and 536 million yuan ($75 million) for upgrading and industrializing its planar process FPGA and FPSoC line, per the prospectus carried on Sina Finance. FPGAs are reconfigurable logic chips used in networking, communications and embedded systems, a category long dominated by U.S. firms Xilinx (now part of AMD) and Altera (recently spun out by Intel).The SSE said it will forward the application to the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the national securities regulator, for registration once it receives Anlogic's filing materials. [Yicai](https://www.yicai.com/brief/103240069.html) [state-affiliated] [Sina Finance](https://finance.sina.cn/2026-05-25/detail-inhzcpii2778703.d.html?vt=4) [Eastmoney](https://finance.eastmoney.com/a/202605263750015260.html)

- **Indium and germanium prices roughly double year-to-date as China critical metal exports tighten** — Prices for indium and germanium have approximately doubled since the start of 2026, with Shanghai tin futures up nearly 40% over the same period, on tight Chinese export controls and AI compute demand, per Jiemian. Indium feeds indium tin oxide transparent conductive films used in displays and some compound semiconductor lasers, while germanium is used in optical fiber, infrared sensors and silicon germanium transistors that handle radio frequency and high-speed signal paths. The Huaxia Rare Metals ETF, which tracks the CSI Rare Metals Theme Index, closed up 5.75% on June 22 with turnover of 64.6 million yuan ($9 million), and index constituents including Zhongtungsten High Tech, Yunnan Germanium and Tin Industry Co., among others, each hit the daily trading limit. China Securities analysts cited in the article said tungsten, germanium, gallium and antimony are now under both export licensing and mining quota caps, with AI compute and military demand stacking on top of supply rigidity. [Jiemian](https://www.jiemian.com/article/14624651.html)

# 7. Defense & Dual-Use

- **Kuang-Chi Cutting-Edge signs 612 million yuan ($86 million) in metamaterial contracts including new client R&D order** — Kuang-Chi Technology disclosed that its wholly owned subsidiary Kuang-Chi Cutting-Edge signed batch-production metamaterial contracts totaling 565 million yuan ($79 million) with two existing clients and a 47 million yuan ($6.5 million) metamaterial product R&D contract with a new client, for a cumulative recent total of 612 million yuan ($86 million), per Yicai. Metamaterials are engineered composite structures with electromagnetic properties not found in natural materials, used in radar stealth, antenna and electronic warfare components on defense and aerospace platforms. Kuang-Chi is China's main publicly traded metamaterials supplier for the Chinese defense and aerospace customer base. The company said the new R&D contract is expected to lead to follow-on batch-production contracts for new platform variants. [Yicai](https://www.yicai.com/brief/103240088.html) [state-affiliated]

- **Tiangong space station to expand from T to + configuration with new module** — China's Tiangong space station will begin a second expansion to add a new module that converts the current T-shaped configuration into a + cross shape, China Central Television (CCTV) reported, per Jiemian. The new module will dock at the forward port of the Tianhe core, is physically larger than Tianhe itself, and adds docking ports, an additional astronaut airlock for spacewalks and a docking interface for a future laboratory module, per a China.com piece on the program. The Long March 5B carrier rocket will be upgraded with a larger payload fairing and an added stage to support the expansion module. Tiangong has hosted 267 in-orbit science and applications projects since the Tianhe core was launched on April 29, 2021. [Jiemian](https://www.jiemian.com/article/14624823.html) [China.com](https://news.china.com/socialgd/10000169/20260429/49462639.html) [state-affiliated]

# 10. Strategic Context

- **Zhipu Hong Kong shares clear 1 trillion HKD market cap, A-share STAR IPO vote on the same day** — Zhipu AI's Hong Kong listed shares rose about 15% on June 22, peaking at HK$2,980 and closing at HK$2,410, taking market capitalization above 1.07 trillion HKD ($140 billion) for the first time, per TMTPost.  Founder Tang Jie publicly contested Elon Musk on X over how soon Chinese frontier models will reach the level of Anthropic's Claude Fable 5, replying "won't take that long" after Musk projected a first-quarter 2027 horizon. Zhipu reported a 4.72 billion yuan ($660 million) net loss in 2025 with R&D spending at 4.4 times revenue, and JPMorgan's prior estimate puts Zhipu reaching profitability in 2029. [TMTPost](https://www.tmtpost.com/8036191.html)

- **ASML and Dutch government publicly reaffirm China cannot obtain advanced EUV machines after U.S. Commerce Secretary's claim** — ASML and Dutch officials publicly stated that China has no chance of obtaining the company's most advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, the photolithography equipment that prints the smallest features on the most advanced semiconductor process nodes. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick previously suggested ASML had quietly exported EUV equipment to China, per Kuaikeji. An ASML spokesperson said the company has never exported any EUV system or any EUV-exclusive component, module or accessory to China and that all relevant transactions comply with export controls. The Dutch government said it is strictly enforcing all export control policies and will intervene at necessary points to ensure compliance.  [Leiphone](https://www.leiphone.com/category/zaobao/CjtmS9BIqn0j7Noy.html)