China Daily Briefing

KE Holdings (BEKE) jumped 5.89% on Tuesday, leading a broad property/real estate sector surge as investor optimism about China's housing market stabilization caught a bid. The move suggests early-cycle positioning around PBOC's LPR cut expectations: Tier-1 city home prices have stopped falling, and mortgage demand is recovering. For investors tracking the A/H premium, Vanke and Country Garden HK-listed shares will be the next tell for whether this BEKE move is the start of a sustained rotation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday — just four days after Trump's summit with Xi Jinping — for his 25th China visit. SCMP framed this as 'civilisational theatre', with Beijing using back-to-back summits to project its diplomatic centrality. For markets, the Putin visit signals no near-term deviation from China's Russia trade flows (critical for Chinese oil imports at discounted Urals crude), which underpins refinery margin calculations and RMB/USD range trading.

China's EV names dropped across the board — Li Auto -3.95%, NIO -2.04%, XPEV -1.33% — as market participants reassess near-term delivery trajectories against intensifying domestic price competition from BYD's expanding product range. Despite KWEB Internet ETF rising 0.68%, the EV complex is now being treated as a structurally weaker sector. Northbound Stock Connect flows into EV names will be the key institutional signal; sustained selling would confirm the re-rating is not just retail noise.