Don’t look now, but big Chinese tech’s in a bull market.

After falling more than 20% from the best levels reached during the September-October stimulus rally, the Hang Seng Tech index found its footing midway through last month and proceeded to climb more than 30% in a matter of weeks, helped along by DeepSeek’s coup attempt against America’s AI incumbents.

The raucous rally in Hong Kong crescendoed Friday in a near 6% single-session gain for the tech gauge, the best day in four months. If you exclude the sessions around the stimulus hype in September and October, it was the best day in a year.

As the figure shows, China’s tech heavyweights are off the mat, trading at two-year highs.

The figure also serves as a reminder of just how much damage Xi Jinping did when he launched his infamous anti-monopoly crackdown targeting the sector. Without mincing words, and without exaggeration: Xi took some of the best companies in the world and ruined them. On purpose.

Consider this. The Hang Seng Tech gauge (which includes most of the “brand name” Chinese tech giants) is up 97% from the October 2022 lows and 60% since September of 2024, but it’s still down 50% from the records hit in February of 2021, when Xi embarked on a multi-faceted societal overhaul in the name of “common prosperity.”

That overhaul traces its roots to one event: Jack Ma’s fateful remarks in October of 2020, when China’s most famous billionaire decided, against the advice of confidants, to publicly chide the country’s regulatory apparatus for stifling growth and the banking sector for adopting a “pawnshop” mentality.

Suffice to say Beijing viewed Ma’s remarks not as constructive criticism, but as insubordination. Ma’s critique came on the eve of what could’ve been the largest IPO in history: A dual Shanghai-Hong Kong listing for Ant Group. But it wasn’t to be. Xi, aggrieved at Ma’s criticism, nixed the IPO and disappeared the man. Ma effectively went into exile and frankly, he’s lucky to be alive.

Fast forward four years and Ma was invited to attend a “symposium” chaired by Xi, who wants to “boost private sector sentiment,” as Reuters put it. Xi, the linked article went on, “rarely chairs symposiums about the private sector,” and the fact that he’s personally presiding over such an event “underscores the numerous challenges facing China Inc, from escalating tensions with the United States… to sputtering growth for the domestic economy.”

Guess who else got an invitation? Liang Wenfeng, the quant fund manager who founded DeepSeek. Both men will presumably meet with Xi, and as early as next week. In their own coverage, Bloomberg called the invite “a potentially momentous show of support for the private sector after years of turmoil.”

Needless to say, shares of Alibaba were lovin’ it. The stock, which was already on a tear thanks to generalized AI hype and news that the company will partner with Apple on an AI rollout in China, added another 6.3% Friday.

For the week, Alibaba rose 24%, the best weekly showing for the stock since… well, ever. It was the best business week on record for the Hong Kong listing, and the rolling five-session advance ranks right up there too.

It’s not just tech, although that’s a big part of it: The “plain” Hang Seng Index notched a fifth straight weekly advance, and H-shares (i.e., Hong Kong-listed Chinese stocks) are up 14% already in 2025.

The usual caveat applies: When you bet on Chinese equities, you’re suggesting, whether you realize it or not, that you have special insight into the Party’s thinking. But you don’t. Let me emphasize that: You don’t.

That doesn’t mean you can’t score a quick gain, but you have to be prepared for a letdown in the event Xi’s priorities shift. Yes, AI’s likely to be a perennial strategic priority for China, but the nature of the private sector’s role remains unclear, and the notion that the Party will allow foreign investors to reap a financial windfall from homegrown AI advances is nothing short of laughable.

Still, there’s probably something to this, at least near- to medium-term. As Nomura’s Charlie McElligott put it this week, “there’s some real meat on the bone to this global rebalancing trade away from ‘US exceptionalism’ into left-for-dead RoW, especially with the China Tech / DeepSeek phenomenon as a catalyst.”