中国 AI 股泡沫破裂复盘：散户视角看行情如何走到今天

X.PIN· @thexpin · X·2026-11-14 02:37· 1 小时前AI 评分56

They Say China’s AI Bubble Has Burst… Now What?

AI 导读

一名大陆散户作者复盘中国 AI 股下跌的前因，认为仅说泡沫破裂不能解释全部过程。

正文 · 原文

October was a dark month for Chinese stocks. Mainland markets fell for ten straight weeks, marking a rare losing streak that wiped out $480 billion in value, according to Reuters. Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style STAR 50 Index, which is packed with artificial intelligence and chip companies, has dropped 40% from its June peak. Meanwhile, the blue-chip CSI 300 Index, China’s rough version of the S&P 500, is down 20% for the year. To outside observers, China’s AI stock bubble has finally burst.

A bursting bubble makes for dramatic news, yet Western reports have focused too much on the final fallout and missed how we got here. Clear topping signals started flashing across China’s major stock indexes four to five months ago, hidden in market details that foreign media rarely cover.

As an everyday retail investor in mainland China, I lived through Beijing’s push to rein in the AI craze firsthand. Simply declaring that China’s AI bubble has burst does not tell the whole story. We still need to look closely at how that cooldown unfolded, and what happens next.

Warnings Came Much Earlier

To see why those warnings appeared so early, we need to go back to how the bubble started on September 24, 2024. That day, China’s central bank, financial regulator, and securities watchdog rolled out a surprise stimulus package to rescue a weak market. Officials cut the share of deposits banks must keep in reserve by 0.5%, lowered key interest rates by 20 basis points, allowed listed companies to buy emerging-tech businesses, and let insurance funds invest in stocks for longer periods.

Most importantly, the central bank launched its first “swap facility” for brokerages, mutual funds, and insurers. This new tool let financial institutions pledge hard-to-sell assets in exchange for safe central-bank backing so they could borrow fresh cash to buy stocks.

That wave of easy money kicked off a big tech rally led by semiconductors and AI. By December 19, 2024, shares of Cambricon Technologies, a money-losing Chinese AI chip designer, jumped 218%, while chipmaker SMIC rose more than 107% in October alone. Tech exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and mutual funds drew in crowds of everyday investors chasing fast gains. Caught up in the excitement, I bought a telecom ETF myself.

Amid the frenzy, however, investors ignored what China’s state-backed funds, known locally as the “National Team,” actually wanted. Regulators have long tried to break the Chinese market’s two-year curse, as bull runs here rarely last past two years before falling into painfully long downturns. Instead of watching gains burn out in a few crazy months, officials pushed for a “slow bull.” Yet building a slow bull is like herding sheep inside a crowded pen. Beijing wanted to bring more emerging tech companies, which it calls “new quality productive forces,” onto the market through initial public offerings (IPOs).

At the same time, it wanted to keep indexes from getting too concentrated in tech and stop traders from buying expensive stocks with borrowed money. Because of this tug-of-war, popular AI hardware stocks across co-packaged optics (CPO), circuit boards, and optical modules dropped sharply in March 2025 and again that July and August. Money briefly moved into alternatives like trendy toy maker Pop Mart and biotech drugs, though the overall bull market stayed alive through 2025.

Still, my own trading showed me a clear reality: government support for the AI industry did not mean people buying AI stocks would make money. Everyday traders who chased hot stocks like Cambricon at high prices often got stuck waiting nearly a year for the next wave of hype. Even so, index investing created an automatic upward loop. Easy money pushed up tech ETF prices, bringing in more buyers. Those index funds then blindly bought more of their biggest holdings regardless of company profits, pushing stock prices to new highs.

Before long, that blind buying twisted China’s main blue-chip index out of shape. By late June 2026, two Chinese makers of optical modules, the high-speed networking parts used to connect AI servers, had climbed to the very top of the mainstream CSI 300 Index. Zhongji Innolight became its single largest stock at about 4.74% of the index, while rival Eoptolink ranked third at roughly 2.55%.

When one narrow tech theme takes up that much space in a major benchmark, a long drop usually follows once investors start pulling cash out. In the third quarter alone, active mutual funds sold nearly 69.3 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) of Innolight, previously their top holding, and both stocks have plunged 63% over the past six months. The gloomy news reports in late October and November were simply recapping the aftermath of that stampede.

Popped on Purpose?

Because of my own investments this year, I closely watched the E Fund ChiNext ETF, the biggest fund tracking Shenzhen’s tech-heavy ChiNext board. Large buyers poured money into this ETF in late 2023 and early 2024. Starting in 2025, however, the total number of shares in the fund kept shrinking, even as the ChiNext Index itself jumped more than 100% that year.

By May and June of 2026, the fund’s share...

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