4 China Tech Stocks Resilient Despite U.S.-China Trade Tensions

Despite escalating trade tensions marked by unprecedented tariffs of 145% on Chinese exports to the United States, China's technology stocks, including Alibaba BABA, JD.com JD, Baidu BIDU and Tencent Holdings TCEHY, are showing remarkable resilience and growth potential in 2025. This ongoing trade conflict has paradoxically accelerated China's technological self-reliance and innovation capabilities.

President Xi Jinping's recent Southeast Asian tour has strengthened regional ties, creating new market opportunities for Chinese technology exports. These strategic partnerships provide alternative growth avenues as U.S. markets face restrictions. The trade battle has inadvertently accelerated China's push for technological independence, catalyzing innovation across sectors.

Looking ahead, Chinese tech stocks appear well-positioned to benefit from the nation's comprehensive technological development strategy, robust domestic market and growing regional partnerships, making them increasingly attractive to investors seeking exposure to innovation-driven growth stories.

AI Breakthrough & Tech Renaissance Across Sectors

DeepSeek, the groundbreaking Hangzhou-based AI startup, exemplifies China's technological prowess by developing the R1 model that rivals Western counterparts at a fraction of the cost. The company's upcoming R2 model promises enhanced coding capabilities and multilingual reasoning, demonstrating China's ability to innovate efficiently despite constrained access to advanced U.S. semiconductors.

Major Chinese tech companies are capitalizing on this momentum through strategic investments in AI infrastructure and emerging technologies. These moves strengthen China's digital ecosystem and create new growth opportunities, positioning these stocks for continued advancement despite trade complexities.

China's semiconductor sector showcases remarkable adaptability in navigating Western export controls. While not leading in cutting-edge chip fabrication, China dominates advanced packaging technologies with over 25% of the global market share. Innovations like 2.5D/3D stacking enable enhanced chip capabilities at competitive costs, effectively mitigating the impact of U.S. restrictions.

China's technological renaissance extends beyond semiconductors. In 2025, Chinese companies have unveiled impressive advancements across multiple sectors. Unitree Robotics demonstrated humanoid robots with 43 joint motors, while Zeekr and Great Wall Motor showcased cutting-edge electric vehicles. Supporting suppliers like Hesai have achieved dramatic cost reductions, with automotive-grade lidar units dropping from $80,000 in 2017 to $200 in 2025. The augmented reality sector flourishes with Xreal's One Pro glasses and Rokid's multilingual translation eyewear, reflecting China's comprehensive technological approach.

We believe that rapid advancements in Chinese technology and huge spending on its development efforts offer significant growth opportunities for investors. Our China Tech Screen is an invaluable source for identifying stocks with massive growth prospects in the space.

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4 China Tech Stocks to Buy Right Now

Alibaba Group presents a compelling investment opportunity in 2025, driven by three transformative catalysts. First, the company's core businesses are experiencing a remarkable acceleration, with customer management revenues growing 9% year over year and AliExpress recording a 27% increase in U.S. orders, highlighting successful monetization initiatives and international expansion momentum. 

Second, Alibaba’s AI infrastructure strategy is yielding exceptional results, with Qwen AI models garnering over 290,000 corporate users and AI product revenues maintaining triple-digit growth for six consecutive quarters, culminating in the company's largest-ever investment commitment in cloud and AI infrastructure over the next three years. Third, the company's robust financial position with $51.9 billion in net cash, combined with aggressive shareholder returns — including $11.3 billion in buybacks resulting in a 5% share count reduction — demonstrates strong capital discipline. With Fliggy's innovative AskMe AI travel assistant and Accio's rapid adoption reaching one million users in five months, this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company is strategically positioned to capture substantial market share across multiple high-growth sectors. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

JD.com is poised for exceptional growth in 2025 as the company executes ambitious initiatives across its core business segments. The New Product Growth Initiative aims to incubate 600 100-million-yuan bestsellers through tens of billions of RMB in traffic and funding investments, complemented by the strategic upgrade of JD Little Cube to JD New Products for enhanced product discovery. With 250 million users already purchasing new products and merchants participating in launches, which have increased by 130% year over year, JD's Marketing 2.0 Framework and digital tools like JD Innovation Center demonstrate strong momentum. 

Meanwhile, JD Super's partnership with Thailand's Ding Fong Group, securing 2,500 metric tons of premium frozen durian, exemplifies the company's direct-sourcing strategy in the $7 billion Chinese durian market, where JD maintains industry leadership with 30% compound annual growth. It has doubled frozen durian sales since 2022. This Zacks Rank #1 company's integrated ecosystem approach, combining advanced logistics, AI-driven marketing and strategic global partnerships, positions it to capture significant market share across multiple high-growth categories while delivering sustainable competitive advantages in China's rapidly evolving e-commerce landscape.

Baidu, one of China's tech giants, is positioning itself as a formidable player in the autonomous vehicle sector through a strategic partnership with battery powerhouse CATL. The companies announced on Thursday that they will jointly develop "competitive" driverless vehicles, combining Baidu's autonomous driving expertise with CATL's advanced battery technology. This collaboration will integrate CATL's power batteries, battery swapping capabilities, and skateboard chassis technology into next-generation autonomous vehicles.

Adding to its momentum, this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company launched its upgraded Ernie 4.5 AI model, featuring enhanced reasoning capabilities and advanced multimodal functions that process text, images, audio, and video. In a significant strategic shift, Baidu made Ernie 4.5 open source, responding to increasing competition in China's AI landscape. Meanwhile, Ernie X1 has been developed as a multimodal reasoning model, featuring capabilities such as advanced search, image and document comprehension, code interpretation, webpage analysis, and TreeMind mapping. This dual focus on autonomous vehicles and AI advancement makes Baidu a compelling tech stock to watch in 2025, as it strengthens its position in two of technology's most promising frontiers.

Tencent’s groundbreaking Hunyuan Turbo S model is expected to be a game changer. This Zacks Rank #2 company’s latest AI innovation has captured market attention by delivering responses within a second, significantly outpacing competitors, including the widely acclaimed DeepSeek-R1. This remarkable speed doesn't come at the expense of performance. Tencent stated that Turbo S matches DeepSeek-V3's capabilities across knowledge, mathematics, and reasoning challenges.

The company's strategic pivot toward cost-efficient AI solutions has also made advanced artificial intelligence more accessible, with Hunyuan Turbo S operating at a fraction of the cost of previous iterations. This competitive pricing strategy, coupled with Tencent's vast ecosystem spanning gaming, social media, and fintech, positions the company to potentially capture substantial market share in China's booming AI sector.

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