Macro News
1. During his field trip in Shanghai on the 29th, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, President of the People's Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, emphasized that Shanghai shoulders the historical mission of building an international science and technology innovation center. It should seize opportunities, guided by serving national strategies, continuously enhance its role as a source of scientific and technological innovation and a leader in high-end industries, and accelerate the construction of a globally influential science and technology innovation hub.
2. The Symposium of Central Financial Institutions Stationed in Shanghai Supporting Shanghai's Construction of an International Financial Center was held in Shanghai on April 29th. He Lifeng, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Financial Commission, attended the symposium and delivered a speech. He Lifeng pointed out that it is necessary to calmly analyze and respond to recent developments and changes in the external situation, adhere to goal-oriented and problem-oriented approaches, continuously strengthen Shanghai's role as a gateway for financial opening up while ensuring financial security, enhance the status of the RMB asset global allocation center and risk management center, and promote continuous breakthroughs and improvements in the construction of Shanghai as an international financial center.
3. At yesterday's regular press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a reporter asked about the US Treasury Secretary's claim that China is responsible for the escalation of the tariff war. In response, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated that China has repeatedly made it clear that there are no winners in a tariff or trade war. This tariff war was initiated by the US. If the US wants to resolve issues through dialogue and negotiations, it should stop threats and pressure and engage in dialogue with China on the basis of equality, respect, and mutual benefit.
4. According to data from the People's Bank of China, the weighted average interest rate on newly issued commercial personal housing loans nationwide in the first quarter of 2025 was 3.11%.
5. The US goods trade deficit widened to a record $162 billion in March, compared to an estimated $145 billion and a February deficit of $147.9 billion. The data, which is not adjusted for inflation, exceeded economists' expectations. Driven by imports of consumer goods, imports rose 5% to $342.7 billion in March. Exports increased 1.2% in the same month.
Industry News
1. Announcements of board resolutions disclosed by the five major state-owned banks—Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Bank of Communications—show that the boards of all five banks have passed proposals to amend their articles of association and abolish/no longer establish supervisory boards. These proposals are subject to approval by the banks' shareholders' meetings. In addition, China Merchants Bank also announced that it would no longer establish a supervisory board.
2. New China Life Insurance announced that it plans to invest no more than RMB 10 billion (inclusive) to subscribe for shares in the Guofeng Xinghua Honghu Zhiyuan Phase II Private Securities Investment Fund. It is understood that the fund has a founding size of RMB 20 billion. New China Life Insurance and China Life Insurance each plan to invest RMB 10 billion to subscribe for shares in the private fund. The fund's investment scope includes A+H shares of eligible large listed companies among the constituents of the CSI A500 Index.
3. The General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a notice on the "Implementation Plan for the Action Plan to Save Grain in the Aquaculture Industry." It mentions striving to reduce the proportion of grain consumption in feed used by the national aquaculture industry to around 60% by 2030, with the proportion of soybean meal consumption reduced to around 10%. It also mentions controlling the "master switch" of the breeding sow inventory, guiding aquaculture farms and households to optimize the structure of their breeding sow inventory and reasonably control production capacity.
4. Tencent has comprehensively reorganized its research and development system for the Hunyuan large model, mainly refreshing team deployments around the three core areas of computing power, algorithms, and data, and increasing R&D investment.
5. It is reported that some manufacturers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces have received notifications from major US retailers such as Walmart, requesting them to resume shipments in the near future. Additionally, it is reported that a large stationery and office supplies exporter in Ningbo received a notification from Walmart on Monday to resume normal shipments to the US. The company stated that the cost of new import tariffs will be borne by US customers.
6. Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the China Passenger Car Association, stated in an article that global auto sales reached 8.75 million units in March 2025, up 5% YoY. March 2025 sales were 5% lower than the peak in March 2018, at a median level over the years. Sales from January to March 2025 were 22.64 million units, up 5% YoY. China accounted for 33% of global auto sales from January to March 2025, with the lower share of Chinese automakers at the beginning of the year being a normal reflection of the Chinese New Year factor.
7. The China Meteorological Administration and the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a joint departmental regulation, the "Measures for the Application and Service of Artificial Intelligence in Meteorology," on April 29th, to encourage, promote, and regulate the healthy and orderly development of AI meteorological application services. The "Measures for the Application and Service of Artificial Intelligence in Meteorology" is the first departmental regulation in China to promote and regulate the application of AI in a specific field.
8. The "2025 Work Priorities for Promoting the Healthy and High-Quality Development of Beijing's Private Economy" was recently released. It proposes that Beijing will support private enterprises in building intelligent computing centers, providing support based on a certain proportion of investment for enterprises that purchase domestically controllable GPU chips to provide intelligent computing services. It will also focus on supporting private enterprises in participating in the construction of green innovation platforms.
Company News
1. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China reported a net profit of RMB 84.16 billion in the first quarter, down 3.99% YoY.
2. Kweichow Moutai announced a net profit of RMB 26.847 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up 11.56% YoY.
3. China Eastern Airlines announced a net loss of RMB 995 million in the first quarter.
4. China State Shipbuilding Corporation announced that its net profit in the first quarter increased 181% YoY.
5. China Life Insurance announced that its net profit in the first quarter increased 40% YoY.
6. China Northern Rare Earth announced that its net profit in the first quarter increased 727% YoY, mainly due to increases in both sales volume and prices of its major rare earth products.
7. China Construction Bank reported a net profit of RMB 83.35 billion in the first quarter, down 4% YoY.
8. Chuangxing Resources announced that it will be subject to delisting risk warnings starting from May 6th, and its securities abbreviation will be changed to *ST Chuangxing.
9. Tongyu Heavy Industry announced that its controlling shareholder is planning a change in control, and the company's shares and convertible bonds have been suspended from trading.
10. *ST Navigation announced that it has revoked its delisting risk warning, and its stock abbreviation has been changed to Poly Navigation.
11. Air China announced a net loss of RMB 2.044 billion in the first quarter.
12. China Galaxy Securities announced a net profit of RMB 3.016 billion in the first quarter, up 84.86% YoY.
13. Trinasolar announced a net loss of RMB 1.32 billion in the first quarter.
14. China Resources Microelectronics announced that its net profit in the first quarter increased 151% YoY.
15. Bank of China reported a net profit of RMB 54.36 billion in the first quarter, down 2.9% YoY.
16. AECC Aviation Power announced a net profit of RMB 7.5114 million in the first quarter, down 95.15% YoY.
17. CITIC Securities announced a net profit of RMB 6.545 billion in the first quarter, up 32% YoY.
18. Yong'an Pharmaceutical issued an announcement stating that rumors such as "a several-fold surge in taurine prices" are untrue.
19. Weichai Power announced that it plans to repurchase shares worth RMB 500 million to RMB 1 billion for cancellation and reduction of registered capital.
20. Will Semiconductor announced that its net profit in the first quarter was RMB 866 million, up 55.25% YoY.
21. Dawei Technology announced that its shareholder Gao Dapeng plans to reduce his stake by no more than 3% of the company's shares.
22. Tianqi Lithium released its first-quarter report, showing a net profit of RMB 104 million in the first quarter, turning a year-on-year loss into a profit.
23. *ST Jiayu announced that its shares will be delisted on April 30th.
24. Inspur Information released its first-quarter report, showing that its net profit in the first quarter increased 53% YoY.
25. PetroChina reported an IFRS net profit of RMB 46.81 billion in the first quarter, up 2.3% YoY.
Global Markets
1. The three major US stock indices closed higher collectively, with the Dow up 0.75%, the S&P 500 up 0.58%, and the Nasdaq up 0.55%. Both the Dow and the S&P 500 recorded six consecutive daily gains.
2. The June contract for WTI crude oil futures fell 2.63%, and the June contract for Brent crude oil futures fell 2.44%.
3. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Russia and Ukraine now need to submit specific proposals. If there is no progress, the US will withdraw from the mediation process. The US Senate voted to approve David Perdue as the US Ambassador to China.
Investment Opportunities Reference
1. MIIT Issues Document to Accelerate the Formulation and Revision of Automotive Chip Standards
According to media reports, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released the 2025 Work Priorities for Automotive Standardization, accelerating the formulation and revision of automotive chip standards. It will accelerate the formulation of standards for automotive chip environments and general specifications for reliability, information security, and conformance testing, and improve the basic evaluation methods for automotive chips. It will promote the release and implementation of standards for safety chips, power drive chips for EVs, etc., complete the review and submission for approval of standards for intelligent cockpit computing chips, satellite positioning chips, infrared thermal imaging chips, and chassis control chips, and accelerate the development of product standards for control chips, sensing chips, communication chips, and memory chips to meet the needs of automotive chip product selection and matching applications.
According to data from China Research and Intelligence, it is estimated that the size of China's automotive chip market may reach RMB 95.07 billion in 2025. Guotai Junan Securities points out that in high-end chip fields such as MCUs, intelligent power devices, and power management chips, foreign manufacturers dominate, and the localization of high-end automotive chips is imperative.
2. The National Data Administration Calls for Promoting High-Level Development and Utilization of Data Resources
According to media reports, the National Data Administration held a meeting in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. The meeting called for a profound understanding of the mechanisms of data elements and the laws of industrial development. Centered on building a nationally integrated data resource development and utilization system, it emphasized adhering to market-oriented and value-oriented approaches, strengthening integration and sharing, openness and common use, and authorized operations to accelerate the implementation of policies for the development and utilization of public data and release the value of public data. It emphasized facility interconnection, value co-creation, and scenario applications to accelerate innovative pilots of trusted data spaces and create new models for large-scale circulation and utilization of data. It emphasized interest coordination, subject cultivation, and ecological aggregation to vigorously cultivate an open and innovative data industry ecosystem. It emphasized data registration, resource surveys, and standard construction to continuously consolidate the work foundation, effectively promote high-level development and utilization of data resources, and better empower high-quality economic and social development.
Soochow Securities believes that China has gradually achieved cost reduction in computing power and equity in models, and data is expected to become the main driver for China's AI industry to overtake competitors. DeepSeek is expected to break down barriers to the release of public data, promote the marketization of data elements, and recommends paying attention to targets related to data infrastructure, data annotation, and data operations, as well as companies with unique high-quality datasets.
3. Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance Compete to Purchase Computing Power Resources
In the first quarter of this year, Tencent purchased GPU (graphics processing unit) computing power resources worth approximately RMB 2 billion from ByteDance, mainly consisting of NVIDIA H20 cards and servers. The current updates of Tencent Yuanbao mainly use cards from ByteDance. In addition to Tencent, a source familiar with the matter said that Alibaba also placed GPU orders with ByteDance after DeepSeek became popular in the first quarter of this year. Multiple sources close to ByteDance said that ByteDance stockpiled approximately 100,000 GPU modules last year. A source from a server manufacturer estimated that the total value of these GPU resources is around RMB 100 billion.
Previously, Alibaba announced that it will invest more than RMB 380 billion over the next three years in building cloud and AI hardware infrastructure, exceeding the total investment of the past decade. At the same time, internet giants such as ByteDance and Tencent have also increased their investments in computing power, reflecting robust industry demand. Guotai Haitong believes that Alibaba's significant increase in AI infrastructure investment will be actively followed by domestic CSP (cloud service provider) manufacturers, potentially replicating the IDC (internet data center) investment boom seen during the "Internet+" cycle.Other CSP producers will also simultaneously increase their investments in AIDC (Artificial Intelligence Data Centers), driving improvements in demand for the domestic AI computing power industry chain.
4. "Policy support + gradual demand release" expected to boost the industry's prosperity
Institutions have pointed out that the profits of civil explosives companies surged in Q1 2025. It is reported that in Q1 2025, civil explosives producers achieved a cumulative explosives production of 899,800 mt, up 1.5% YoY, a cumulative total profit of 1.313 billion yuan, up 23.03% YoY, and a cumulative blasting service revenue of 7.241 billion yuan, up 35.52% YoY. In the medium and long-term, the civil explosives industry is expected to encounter multiple development opportunities, including accelerated M&A integration among leading companies, the Western Development strategy, the establishment of energy supply bases in Xinjiang, and the "go global" initiative under the Belt and Road Initiative.
According to media reports, from an industry perspective, the prosperity of the civil explosives industry is expected to rise amid policy support and the gradual release of downstream demand. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that mining investment grew by 10.5% in 2024, with stable demand for mining, the largest application sector for civil explosives products. Additionally, the Ministry of Natural Resources has actively expanded the sources of exploration blocks in line with the "14th Five-Year Plan" implementation plan for the new round of strategic mineral exploration breakthroughs. From January to September last year, a total of 984 mineral exploration rights were granted nationwide, including 570 strategic mineral exploration rights, representing a 218.4% YoY increase. Regionally, the demand for explosives in Xinjiang and Tibet regions has shown a growth trend. Zhongtai Securities stated that under the influence of tariff policies, the logic of boosting domestic demand is continuously strengthening. Mining efforts for coal, metals, and other resources may be further intensified, and investments in infrastructure and national key industrial strategies (such as the Western Development strategy and coal chemical industry) are expected to receive enhanced policy support, stimulating a rise in civil explosives demand. Emphasis should be placed on the opportunities in the civil explosives sectors of Xinjiang and Tibet.
