China Daily Briefing

China's two largest carmakers posted Q3 2026 earnings beats driven primarily by overseas sales acceleration in Europe and Southeast Asia, as SCMP Business confirmed. BYD's net profit and Geely's earnings both jumped as international volumes compensated for subdued domestic market performance — the domestic EV price war is crimping margins, but export pricing holds better. This earnings read confirms China's EV OEMs have made the strategic pivot from domestic scale to export margin: the EU tariff framework is now the single biggest risk to this thesis and should be watched at every Brussels briefing.

AllianzGI published research arguing Hong Kong is positioned to attract capital inflows as investors reassess relative European and Middle Eastern asset safety. The argument rests on HKD peg certainty (HKMA held 4.25% today in Fed lockstep), Southbound Stock Connect access to mainland growth, and HK's discount to pre-2020 peaks. If even 10% of the thesis converts to actual flow, HSCEI and HSTI valuations re-rate meaningfully from current levels. The counterargument — which Southbound flow data would validate or refute — is that mainland investors are reducing HK risk, not adding it.

Unitree reported a 70% quarterly revenue surge though AI investment weighed on net profit — the exact cost-of-growth trade-off that characterizes China's AI hardware buildout phase. SCMP Business's coverage highlights Unitree's position as one of the STAR Market's more visible robotics names, and the revenue growth validates that humanoid and industrial robot order books are filling ahead of commercial deployment cycles. For A-share investors, Unitree's trajectory is a microcap signal for the broader AI hardware supply chain that includes PCB makers, precision mechanics firms, and LiDAR manufacturers on the STAR Market.