Portfolio Manager, Asian Equities, RBC Global Asset Management (Asia) Limited, summarizes the market in 2025 for the asset class, and gives her thoughts for 2026.
2025 started out strong for the China equity market due to DeepSeek momentum before, but this momentum was crashed on Liberation Day.
Key 2025 thematics included AI, biotech, energy storage, and precious metals, which are expected to persist into 2026.
For 2026, the property sector is projected to bottom gradually, with potential government support if Q4’s downward trend continues; equity markets remain constructive, driven by sector-specific earnings growth despite deflation concerns.
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Transcription
Siguo Chen
2025 has been a volatile year for the Chinese equity market, to say the least. We had a really good start, but that is mainly driven by the DeepSeek momentum. And that's mostly on valuation; we haven't seen much of earnings growth. That momentum was crashed on Liberation Day in April, and it took roughly a month for the index to recover. Since then, we are looking to finish around 30% for the year. This is a reset of the past three to four years of that Chinese equity downturn. There are multiple thematics that worked throughout the year. One is AI, and that is no different than other parts of the world, namely U.S, and in Asia, we have Taiwan, Korea, and Japan for the same thematic. And in China, we have a really good supply chain to Nvidia, to Google, the supplier to the CSPs in the U.S., and at the same time, they have a supply chain supplying to the Chinese players. So both did really well throughout the year. The stock price performance was not only driven by multiple expansion but also EPS growth. Other than that, we had healthcare that did really well. And that's mainly in the biotech sector. In biotech, we saw a stream of licensing deals to U.S. and European MNCs. Other than that, we have seen energy storage, for example, and materials, basic materials. Those did really well in 2025. For example, the energy storage thematic and material, precious metals. Those, we expect to continue to work in the year of 2026.
What is your outlook for China Equities in 2026?
Siguo Chen
For the year of 2026, we are looking for the property sector to gradually find the bottom. And in the first half of 2026, if we see a continuation of the downward trend of Q4 this year, we expect the government to push out more supportive policies. Another thing to watch out for is the deflationary environment. Government needs to do something to address this issue, but for this year, we are being constructive for the equity market because it's going to be driven by earnings growth in individual sectors. We are looking for a property bottoming in this year as well.
Video recorded on November 21, 2025