Chinese tech companies competed to launch new products in a week, with Beijing doubled the calls to support artificial intelligence. The obscure Chinese startup, running on Wednesday under the name Monica, announced an invitation-only AI application called Manus, which claims to streamline the analysis of resumes and financial information using several models from companies such as Openai, Deepseek and Anthropic. “Innovation is probably not as important as Deepseek,” Nomura China technology analyst Bing Duan and his team wrote Thursday. “But this product is another example of China’s AI innovation.” According to analysts, three of their picks are Chinese listed printing circuit board companies in mainland China that have partnerships with Chinese AI technology leaders, according to Shenann Circuit, Shengyi Technology and WUS PCB. Buy all four stocks in Chinese stock as China has increased tariffs and policymakers announced a rare increase in its deficit. Several senior officials publicly praised the rise of Deepseek AI, highlighting that restrictions only encouraged Chinese companies to work harder for technology. In a memo, Nicholas Yeo, head of China Equity at Abrdn, said technology messaging is “a powerful signal that is encouraging and supports both innovation and the private sector.” “We believe that the evaluation of the Internet sector remains a very attractive opportunity for investors, along with the support of authorities to enhance the country’s AI capabilities,” he said. Hong Kong’s Hangsen index rose 5.6% last week, hitting a three-year high. The CSI 300 fell approximately 1.4% in a week. According to Aaron Costello, Asia Head at Cambridge Associates, it led the majority of recent earnings in Chinese stocks, which are reflected in the outperformance of mainland China stocks known as Hanten Index and equities. He pointed out that most Chinese technical names are traded in Hong Kong. If China’s stimulus begins to see economic outcomes, stocks should see another leg up as profits expand, he said. Tencent and AI, which support the profits of the Hangsen Index, was Alibaba’s Hong Kong-traded stocks, a new 52-week high. The e-commerce company has revealed a new AI inference model that claims to perform similarly to Deepseek’s R1 model. Tencent also traded in Hong Kong, and a week ago launched the Turbo S, the latest version of the Hunyuan AI model that claims to beat Deepseek V3, Openai’s GPT-4O, Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Llama 3.1 for certain key indicators such as MMLU, Math and China. Tencent has also released a new T1 inference model based on the Turbo S. T1 is currently accessible via the Yuanbao app and also offers Deepseek Access. “We argue that the last few weeks have presented sufficient evidence in favor of Tencent’s ability to produce AI,” said Robin Zhu and his team of Bernstein China Internet Analyst in a report that they have nominated Tencent to their top AI play. “By implementing Deepseek within Tencent’s recent app, this is one of the things Tencent’s top management has decided that they must bring together the military for a common goal,” the analyst said. “The company not only moves quickly to implement Deepseek in a family of digital ecosystems, including WeChat and AI assistant Yuanbao, but also includes Peacekeeper Elite within its Video Gaming portfolio.” Bernstein analysts raised Tencent’s price target to HK$640, up 20% since the end of Friday. The company evaluates stocks being overweight. “Tencent’s AI assistant Yuanbao is currently being downloaded at a faster rate than both Bytedance’s Doubao and Deepseek app,” the analyst said. “Social ads are a monetization pathway that has been tried and tested for advances in AI, and Yuanbao’s growth could set up a larger search ad business over time.” Tencent is expected to release quarterly results on March 19th. —CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
