FOR CHINESE stocks to outperform American ones is rare enough. But this year the MSCI China index has beaten its American equivalent by an impressive 20 percentage points, on the back of excitement about cutting-edge tech firms such as DeepSeek and Manus AI. American shares, meanwhile, have been weighed down by worries about a bellicose Trump administration and the danger of a slowing economy. More
Tian Shan—the name for the mountains that cross Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan—roughly translates as “Mountains of Heaven”. It is fitting for a range that is dotted with gold mines, including Kumtor, one of Central Asia’s largest and a symbol of Kyrgyz national pride. Moreover, it is not just the mountains of Central Asia that hold big reserves. Hundreds of kilometres to the west, in Uzbekistan’s Kyzylkum Desert, sits Muruntau, the world’s largest open-pit gold mine. More
Brazil may not be an obvious place to look for the future of retail banking. Yet in just over a decade Nubank, based in São Paulo, has transformed its home market by offering cheap, branchless banking to millions of customers ignored by the big players. Its market value of $56bn leaves it vying with Itaú Unibanco for the title of Latin America’s biggest bank. In 2024 Nubank made $2bn in profit, double the previous year’s figure. Having conquered Brazil, and with the country’s economy now struggling, it has set its eyes on new markets. More
E-commerce giants have reported stronger year-on-year revenue growth in the last three months of 2024, indicating recovery in consumption growth — but not back to pre-pandemic levels.
However, the earnings released by certain companies reveal strong consumer spending in niche areas, with companies such as Laopu Gold and Pop Mart seeing a surge in revenues.
Competition remains fierce in certain market segments, such as coffee and tea.
Shoppers line up to shop at a Laopu Gold outlet in Deji Plaza in Nanjing, China, on Feb. 21, 2025.
Fang Dongxu | Feature China | Future Publishing | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese companies’ latest earnings reports point to an improvement in consumer spending, though it’s not necessarily back to pre-pandemic levels.
E-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com both said in the last several weeks that their China retail business saw faster year-on-year revenue growth in the last three months of 2024 than in 2023.
“We think consumption growth is in a period of healthy recovery, but not [yet reaching] the high previously,” Charlie Chen, managing director and head of Asia research at China Renaissance Securities, said Wednesday in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
For consumer spending to return to pre-pandemic growth, Chinese companies’ revenue growth likely needs to recover by double digits and consumer confidence needs to improve, Chen said. He noted that the recent real estate slump has weighed on consumers’ sense of affluence.
Chinese policymakers have emphasized that boosting consumption is their priority this year. So far, authorities have expanded a trade-in subsidy program to include smartphones, on top of home appliances and electric cars. In September, Beijing also signaled a shift in real estate policy by calling for a halt in the market decline.
JD.com has benefitted directly from the trade-in program, and reported 15.8% year-on-year growth in sales for electronics and home appliances in the fourth quarter of 2024. However, full-year segment revenue of 4.9% was only the fastest growth since 2021, when sales surged by nearly 23%.
The government has introduced consumption-stimulating policies since the second half of last year, and they have “driven a steady recovery in consumer confidence,” Sandy Xu, chief executive officer and executive director of JD.com, said in an earnings call this month, according to a FactSet transcript.
“In short-term we believe there are still challenges on the macro side, but in the long term, we remain very optimistic about consumer sentiment,” she said.
Niche markets stand out
Tencent, which operates mobile payments and social media app WeChat, reported a 3% growth in fintech and businesses services to 56.1 billion yuan ($7.7 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2024, noting that “commercial payment services revenue was broadly stable year-on-year.” That compares with 39% segment growth in the fourth quarter of 2019, which Tencent had attributed to “greater revenue contributions from commercial payment.”
Certain companies have found niche areas where Chinese consumers are spending, however.
In late February, Beijing-based Laopu Gold, which makes and sells gold jewelry with Chinese designs, forecast that its net profit last year surged by at least 236% in 2024 to 1.4 billion yuan. The company is set to release full results for 2024 on Tuesday.
Toy company Pop Mart also propelled ahead, reporting on Wednesday that revenue in mainland China more than doubled last year to 2.64 billion yuan.
Niu Technologies reported that e-scooter sales in China surged by more than 80% year on year in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 646.2 million yuan. Full-year segment sales rose by 27.5%. The company attributed growth to its focus on premium models and store expansion.
In contrast, Niu had said the relatively slow recovery in China’s economic growth in 2023 had resulted in a decline in sales that year.
China’s official economic data for the start of the year showed modest improvement in growth.
Retail sales growth of 4% year over year in January and February was the highest increase in the past 12 months on a seasonally adjusted basis, Chen said. Since that rise was on a high base of 5.5% growth in the first two months of 2024, he expects retail sales growth this year will be higher than 4%.
Retail sales rose by a muted 3.5% in 2024. For 2015 to 2019, retail sales had grown by an average of 9.7% each year.
Chen said he expects government policy to support more consumer discretionary or services spending since the potential for recovery is greater there than in daily necessities.
Chinese travel booking site Trip.com said in late February its net revenue for 2024 rose by 20% to 53.3 billion yuan. That was faster than a 15% increase in 2019 to 35.7 billion yuan in net revenue.
While the company did not detail its views on the domestic market, it emphasized that international travel had recovered to more than 120% of 2019 levels. CEO Jane Sun also highlighted in an earnings call that the “silver generation,” or travelers over the age of 50, is a target demographic as the market segment will likely exceed 1 trillion yuan in value in coming years.
Intense competition
China, the world’s second-largest consumer market, remains intensely competitive especially as consumer demand has been soft. Electric car companies have slashed prices, while retailers have struggled to compete with heavy online discounts.
Home accessories retail chain Miniso reported its mainland China revenue grew by 10.9% last year to 1.28 billion yuan, although growth moderated slightly in the December quarter at 6.5%. The company does not plan to accelerate its pace of store openings, and said online sales in China are increasingly driving growth.
Major beverage chains in China from milk tea to coffee also saw lower same-store sales in the latter part of 2024.
Overall industry slowdown and competitors launching low-priced products contributed to a 0.7% drop in same-store sales in the first nine months of 2024, bubble tea chain Guming said in its Hong Kong initial public offering prospectus released Feb. 4.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, average monthly sales per Chagee milk tea store in China fell by 20.6% from a year ago, after modest growth in the prior quarter, according to CNBC calculations of figures disclosed this week in a prospectus for a U.S. IPO. Overseas sales surged by 29.2% year on year in the fourth quarter.
Chinese bubble tea chain Mixue said average sales per store fell to 1.08 million yuan in the first three months of 2024, down from 1.13 million yuan a year earlier, according to the latest figures available.
Even upstart Chinese coffee chain Luckin saw a decline of 3.4% in same-store sales for self-operated stores in the quarter ended Dec. 31 from the year-ago period. Starbucks marked a 6% decline in comparable store sales during that time.
— CNBC’s Ying Shan Lee contributed to this report. More
“I’ll probably be more lenient than reciprocal, because if I was reciprocal, that would be very tough for people,” Trump said in an interview.
“I know there are some exceptions, and it’s an ongoing discussion, but not too many, not too many exceptions,” the president added.
US President Donald Trump meets with US Ambassadors in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2025.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said that tariffs will likely be more “lenient than reciprocal,” as the April 2 tariff deadline looms for a number of levies to go into effect.
“I’ll probably be more lenient than reciprocal, because if I was reciprocal, that would be very tough for people,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Newsmax.
“I know there are some exceptions, and it’s an ongoing discussion, but not too many, not too many exceptions,” the president added.
The comments come as investors worry that a more severe approach signaled by the Trump administration would dampen consumer and corporate sentiment enough to slow down the U.S. economy. On Tuesday, the Conference Board said its measure for consumer expectations on business, income and labor dropped to a 12-year low.
Stocks have struggled recently, with the S&P 500 dropping 3% in the past month. The benchmark also dipped into correction territory amid the tariff pressures, briefly trading more than 10% below a record set in February.
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For Chinese companies wary of U.S. tariffs, the big difference between President Donald Trump’s first and second terms is the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.
Nearly every day in the last two weeks, a major Chinese company has announced a new AI product — or how they’re making money with the tech.
The combined impact of the tech is lifting expectations for Chinese corporate earnings, said Ding Wenjie, investment strategist for global capital investment at China Asset Management.
Computer chip with Chinese flag, 3d conceptual illustration.
Steven Mcdowell/science Photo Library | Science Photo Library | Getty Images
BEIJING — For Chinese companies wary of U.S. tariffs, the big difference between President Donald Trump’s first and second terms is the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.
Chinese companies are hard at work. Nearly every day in the last two weeks, a Chinese firm has announced a new AI product — or how they’re making money with the tech.
To name a few:
Short-video company Kuaishou said Tuesday its AI tool for generating videos, Kling, has raked in more than 100 million yuan ($13.78 million) since its launch last summer.
Tencent last week updated its AI model for generating 3D visuals — which can be used in games or for 3D printing — and released the full version of its Hunyuan T1 reasoning model. A few weeks earlier, Tencent had integrated T1 with its Yuanbao chatbot app that also lets users tap DeepSeek’s R1.
Daily active Yuanbao users surged by 20 times in just a month, Tencent said last week. The company also shared how some farmers have used the AI app to analyze soil conditions for planting.
Baidu on Monday launched tools for people to build websites and simple games with conversational prompts instead of having to write code. Kunlun Tech, parent of browser Opera, on Wednesday upgraded its Mureka app for using AI to generate music.
As a manufacturing hub, China has “great advantages in terms of ‘physical’ AI” since the country has lots of machines that can collect valuable data for training industry-specific models, Maxwell Zhou, CEO of autonomous-driving software company DeepRoute.ai, told CNBC on Friday in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
DeepRoute.ai, launched in 2019, announced last week it was building a system for autonomous-delivery vehicles to send parcels with simple voice commands such as “pick up coffee from this store and send it to the apartment.”
Zhou said he hopes the system to be operational in China by early next year.
While it’s unclear which AI companies will ultimately succeed, analysts expect Chinese businesses stand a better chance at excelling with the help of AI applications. AI tools could cut costs for companies and offset some of the impact of an economic slowdown.
The combined impact of the tech is lifting expectations for Chinese corporate earnings growth in the year ahead, said Ding Wenjie, investment strategist for global capital investment at China Asset Management.
Earnings will signal whether the economy is really turning around, especially under the pressure of tariffs and other trade restrictions.
Goldman Sachs in early February estimated a 20% increase in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods could shave off 5% in Chinese corporate earnings, in Hong Kong dollar terms.
The greater question for the U.S. and China, however, stretches beyond tariffs.
After a visit to China this week for a conference, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman concluded that it was not tariffs or Taiwan that the U.S. and Chinese presidents needed to discuss immediately — but rather AI that’s as smart as humans and pervades the world.
The author of “The World is Flat” likened a possible U.S.-China collaboration on AI to the Soviet-U.S. nuclear arms control deal. More
A general view of the GameStop logo on one of its stores in the city center of Cologne, Germany.
Ying Tang | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Video game retailer GameStop announced Tuesday its board has unanimously approved a plan to buy bitcoin with its corporate cash, echoing a move made famous by MicroStrategy.
The meme stock jumped more than 6% in extended trading Tuesday following the news. The announcement confirmed CNBC’s reporting in February of GameStop’s intention to add bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to its balance sheet.
The video game retailer said a portion of its cash or future debt and equity issuances may be invested in bitcoin and U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins. As of Feb. 1, GameStop held nearly $4.8 billion in cash. The firm also said it has not set a ceiling on the amount of bitcoin it may purchase.
GameStop will be following in the footsteps of software company MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy, which bought billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in recent years to become the largest corporate holder of the flagship cryptocurrency. That decision prompted a rapid, albeit volatile, rise for Strategy’s stock.
GameStop’s foray into cryptocurrencies marks the latest effort by CEO Ryan Cohen to revive the struggling brick-and-mortar business. Under Cohen’s leadership, GameStop has focused on cutting costs and streamlining operations to ensure the business is profitable.
The company said the move could expose it to volatility associated with cryptocurrency prices.
“Bitcoin, for example, is a highly volatile asset and has experienced significant price fluctuations over time. Our Bitcoin strategy has not been tested and may prove unsuccessful,” GameStop said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has ridden a roller coaster since President Donald Trump won reelection. After shooting up and piercing the $100,000 milestone, bitcoin has declined about 18% from its record high to a recent price of approximately $88,000.
In tandem with the cryptocurrency announcement, investors also cheered a rise in GameStop’s fourth-quarter results. The firm reported net income of $131.3 million, more than double the $63.1 million earned in the same quarter last year.
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AMERICA’S ECONOMY is looking peaky. Inflation expectations are creeping up. On March 25th consumer confidence fell to its lowest in 12 years. But Donald Trump, the country’s president, says relief is at hand. “Liberation day” for the economy will arrive on April 2nd, he proclaims, when he intends to slap hefty new tariffs on imports from all over the world. More
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