The headquarters of CXMT at the Konggang Industrial Park in Hefei, Anhui Province, eastern China, on July 27. [AFP]
The headquarters of CXMT at the Konggang Industrial Park in Hefei, Anhui Province, eastern China, on July 27. [AFP]

China is accelerating a push to redirect funding for its advanced technology companies — in AI, semiconductors and beyond — away from Wall Street and toward its own capital markets. The strategy marks a shift from the traditional model of state subsidies, aiming instead to channel the vast savings of Chinese investors directly into high-tech industries. Analysts describe it as a dual drive for self-reliance: technological and financial at once.

The New York Times on Wednesday pointed to the blockbuster Shanghai stock market debuts of memory chipmaker CXMT and humanoid robot maker Unitree as the clearest illustrations of this strategy.

CXMT, which listed on the Shanghai exchange in late July, saw its share price soar 470% on its first day of trading. Its market capitalization has since swelled to $545 billion, overtaking Tencent to become China's largest listed company. Another major Chinese memory chipmaker, Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), is also preparing to go public.

Unitree, the humanoid robot company, likewise saw its shares surge 460% on Wednesday, its first day of trading — a sign of the strong appetite among Chinese investors to gain exposure to the country's leading AI, robotics and semiconductor firms.

The Times said the moves reflect two goals at once: harnessing the technology-stock enthusiasm that has grown among Chinese investors on the back of the AI boom to funnel large-scale capital into advanced industries, while reducing dependence on American technology and finance.

President Xi Jinping has pursued policies to raise self-sufficiency across strategic sectors, from key materials and food to advanced technology. For AI and cutting-edge semiconductors in particular — fields that require enormous capital for research and development and for building production facilities — Beijing has concluded that technological independence also demands a stable domestic funding pipeline.

China's state-run Global Times recently framed the CXMT and Unitree listings as a turning point in global technology capital flows. "The flow of global tech capital has essentially been a one-way street heading west," the paper said in an editorial. "But now the world is turning its gaze from west to east."

For China, nurturing technology companies through capital markets also serves as a complement to direct government subsidies, offsetting their limitations.

Gerard DiPippo, a director at the Washington-based consultancy Eurasia Group, said subsidy-driven strategies struggle in cutting-edge fields where no one knows which approach will win. "There's also a tendency to artificially prop up companies that should be weeded out," he said.

Letting market investors identify and fund the most promising companies allocates capital more efficiently than having the government pick winners directly. DiPippo said China's capital markets and investors will play an increasingly important role in disciplining and sustaining high-growth technology companies.

Chinese authorities have also moved to streamline rules to draw technology companies to mainland exchanges. The Shanghai Stock Exchange issued guidelines in June to simplify the listing process for AI companies, citing the urgency of capital market support for Chinese startups.

The primary targets are Chinese AI companies competing against US firms such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Z.ai and MiniMax, two Chinese AI startups that listed in Hong Kong earlier this year, said they plan to pursue a secondary listing on the Shanghai exchange after Beijing encouraged AI developers to do so.

The Chinese government has gone further than simply attracting companies to domestic markets — it has also shown a willingness to inject funds directly when markets wobble.

In July, when concerns over excessive AI investment sent global equities lower, state-owned investment vehicles including China Reform Holdings and China Chengtong Holdings announced plans to buy a combined $9 billion worth of Chinese shares.


sjy@heraldcorp.com