- In today’s CEO Daily: Asia editor Nick Gordon reports on China’s robotics edge.
- The big story: It’s Budget Day in the U.K.
- The markets: In the black, globally.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Earlier this month, an engineer at electric vehicle maker Xpeng cut open the company’s new humanoid robot to dispel social media rumors that the life-like creature was a real person. “They told me that many people were saying there was a real person hidden inside,” Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng said in a video posted to Weibo. “It is absolutely a real robot, right?” he said after the robot’s “skin” and webbed “muscle” were slashed to reveal its inner machine. The viral stunt is the latest evidence of China’s growing strength in robotics, especially the humanoid kinds that can already dance en masse to Chinese music and box in a ring.
