China Daily Briefing

SCMP Business reported that China's market regulator imposed a $765 million (US dollar) antitrust penalty on Trip.com following a six-month investigation into alleged abuse of market dominance. This is the largest platform-economy antitrust fine in China since the Alibaba $2.8B record in 2021, confirming that Beijing's regulatory appetite for large platform fines has not dissipated despite pro-growth signalling in 2025-26. For investors in China internet ADRs (CTRP, BABA, PDD, Tencent), the fine resets the 'China tech is uninvestable' debate: the regulatory sword is still unsheathed, but a six-month investigation suggests the regulator is at least following process rather than imposing sudden fines.

CATL, the world's largest electric vehicle battery maker, reported record quarterly profits according to SCMP Business — a print that directly contradicts the EV sector price-war narrative by showing that scale advantages at the cell level continue to expand margins for the dominant player even as downstream EV makers bleed. CATL's record profitability in a quarter where Chinese EV sector stocks fell -2.87% is a classic sector bifurcation signal: the value chain is concentrating at the battery-cell manufacturing layer, not the vehicle OEM layer. BYD investors should pay attention — if CATL is extracting margin at the cell level, vehicle OEM profitability is structurally under pressure regardless of unit sales growth.

SCMP Business asked the question that matters for the next phase of China-US tech competition: what is a 'supernode' and how does it change the AI infrastructure rivalry? The piece highlights that China is pushing hard on domestic AI training infrastructure to reduce dependence on Nvidia hardware, with state-backed supernode deployments representing a strategic bet that domestic accelerators can substitute for H100/H800-class GPUs. For global chip investors, the supernode story is the medium-term demand-destruction risk for Nvidia's China revenue base — watch for any acceleration in CXMT (Chinese HBM maker) capacity announcements as the most direct signal of how fast the substitution is proceeding.