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The Chinese stock market has long been seen as a potential investment opportunity by traders, both in the UK and internationally. While the Chinese stock market has faced many challenges of late, ranging from the after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic to ongoing tensions between governments in Beijing and Washington, the recent tech boom has provided growth opportunities in China, particularly in the e-commerce, social media and streaming service sectors. In this article, we profile seven of China’s most promising tech stocks.
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Chinese tech stocks are made up of both blue-chip companies and growth stocks.
- Blue-chip stocks tend to be shares of well-established and stable companies that consistently deliver profits. They aid portfolio diversification as they can help offset the risk of trading shares of smaller companies, including volatile penny stocks.
- Growth stocks are usually funded by venture capital, a form of private financing for start-ups with high growth potential. Institutional investors such as pension funds tend to invest a small percentage of their total funds in these companies at an early stage to potentially make a profit in the long term.
There are two main stock exchanges in mainland China: the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. They rank among the largest exchanges in the world, with market capitalisations of around $7.21tn and $6.22tn, respectively, as of February 2025. These domestic exchanges are home to many Chinese banks, airlines and industrial firms. You can learn more about China’s stock exchange trading hours here.
Meanwhile, several Chinese tech companies choose to list overseas – typically on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq, or New York Stock Exchange – to access a larger pool of international investors, achieve potentially higher valuations, and benefit from less stringent listing requirements than in China’s domestic market.
Indeed, the seven companies we look at below are all listed outside mainland China. Their market capitalisations and share prices are given in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
Alibaba is an online e-commerce retailer and China’s largest company by market capitalisation. Alibaba owns many brands and websites, including Taobao, the largest C2C marketplace in the world; Alibaba Cloud, a cloud computing company; and Tmall, the largest B2C marketplace in the world.
Market cap: $343.539bn
Share price: $135.97
Source: Yahoo! Finance, 21 February 2025
JD is Alibaba’s main competitor within China’s e-commerce and retail sectors, and China’s largest retailer by revenue. JD invests heavily in its logistics network and development of artificial intelligence, charging third-party companies for its services in robotics and driverless delivery vehicles.
Market cap: $66.916bn
Share price: $41.19
Source: Yahoo! Finance, 21 February 2025
Baidu is a technology and advertising company specialising in internet services and artificial intelligence. The Baidu search engine is China’s biggest by users, with an approximate 47% market share in the country, according to data from Statcounter. Baidu is a global leader in cloud storage services with Baidu Wangpan, as well as in smart speaker development and online mapping with Baidu Maps.
Market cap: $32.252bn
Share price: $89.65
Source: Yahoo! Finance, 21 February 2025
NetEase provides content and communication services for developing desktop and mobile games. NetEase has also established a joint venture with Blizzard Entertainment, a US-owned video game company, to produce local versions of popular games including World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and StarCraft II.
Market cap: $66.913bn
Share price: $101.42
Source: Yahoo! Finance, 21 February 2025
Weibo is a social networking company that specialises in microblogging. Its main Sina Weibo service shares similarities with Twitter and Instagram and is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with 587 million monthly active users and 257 million average daily users as of September 2024.
Market cap: $2.628bn
Share price: $11.05
Source: Yahoo! Finance, 21 February 2025
Tencent is a major holding company in China’s tech industry. It is the world’s second-largest video game publisher by revenue and owns China’s top mobile messaging platform, WeChat. Tencent’s rapid growth could be attributed to the development of its online payment service, WeChat Pay. It also holds shares in the US-listed music streaming company Tencent Music Entertainment [NYSE: TME] and Tencent Cloud, the second-largest cloud storage service in China.
Market cap: HK$4.7tn
Share price: HK$486.80
Source: Yahoo! Finance, 21 February 2025
Often referred to as the ‘Netflix of China’, iQIYI is one of China’s biggest video streaming services and one of the largest online video sites in the world, with around 413 million active users as of September 2024 according to Statista1. It was founded by Baidu, which in January 2024 owned a 46% stake in the company, according to an article by Simply Wall St that appeared on Yahoo Finance.
Market cap: $2.219bn
Share price: $2.18
Source: Yahoo! Finance, 21 February 2025
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The China tech stocks discussed above are all available to trade on our online trading platform. Traders can choose between opening a spread betting or CFD trading account. Both spread bets and contracts for difference (CFDs) are financial derivative products that allow traders to speculate on the price movements of financial instruments, without owning the underlying assets. To determine which product suits your trading style, read our summary of the differences between spread betting vs CFDs.
Prefer indices to stock-picking? You can trade on an index of Chinese stocks by trading our derivative instrument, the Hong Kong 50, which is based on Hong Kong’s leading stock market, the Hang Seng Index. Learn more about the Hong Kong 50 here.
You can also trade on several financial instruments in one with our share baskets. These are small portfolios of stocks based on a theme. Our China Tech share basket, which you can learn more about here, includes the following companies:
| Alibaba | Autohome |
| Baidu | iQIYI |
| JD.com | NetEase |
| Pinduoduo | TAL Education |
| Trip.com |
Disclaimer: CMC Markets is an execution-only service provider. The material (whether or not it states any opinions) is for general information purposes only, and does not take into account your personal circumstances or objectives. Nothing in this material is (or should be considered to be) financial, investment or other advice on which reliance should be placed. No opinion given in the material constitutes a recommendation by CMC Markets or the author that any particular investment, security, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. The material has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research. Although we are not specifically prevented from dealing before providing this material, we do not seek to take advantage of the material prior to its dissemination.
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