Shanghai traders watch Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo celebrate a boom made largely of Chinese excitement
China AI Rally Reported Missing, Last Seen Heading Toward Seoul
SHANGHAI – Officials at the Shanghai exchange filed a formal missing-rally report on Friday after confirming that the global artificial intelligence boom, which China helped start, has so far visited every major Asian market except the one that paid for the fireworks. As Asia Times explains in its account of the missing China AI rally, the country gave investors one of the biggest AI thrills of 2026 and is nonetheless home to one of the worst-performing major stock markets, while AI fever lifts Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo.
“We would describe our position as that of a caterer,” said Wen Guoliang, senior coordinator at the Lujiazui Office of Deferred Celebration. “We prepared the food. We set up the chairs. We built several of the guests. Then the party was held next door and we were asked to keep the noise down.” Wen added that the rally is described as tall, enthusiastic and carrying a large quantity of other people’s money, and that anyone who sees it should direct it to the Bund.
A Boom With Every Ingredient Except the Boom
Analysts list several forces holding Chinese shares back, including weak demand, a property sector that continues to resemble a very long sigh, and prices that keep going down in a way economists call deflation and shoppers call Tuesday. The result is a market in which companies announce breathtaking machine intelligence in the morning and close two percent lower in the afternoon. One Shenzhen firm unveiled a model capable of writing poetry, diagnosing rice blight and negotiating a lease, and its shares fell because investors were worried about apartments in Zhengzhou.
The Lujiazui Office released figures showing that 74 percent of local retail investors now check the Korean index first thing in the morning “to see how our AI is doing.” A further 21 percent said they had stopped checking anything and taken up fishing, which at least offers the possibility of something going up.
Official Guidance for Patient Shareholders
To support morale, the office issued a short list of approved explanations that brokers may offer clients who ask where the rally is:
- It is coming, but it is travelling by a scenic route
- It arrived early, in 2015, and nobody was ready
- It is here, but it is being modest
- A rally is a Western concept and we are developing our own
Brokers report that the third explanation performs best with older clients, who appreciate modesty, while younger clients mostly respond by opening a Tokyo trading account on their phones before the broker has finished the sentence.
The Engineers Are Staying Put
Matters are not helped by the wider technology contest. A separate Asia Times dispatch describes how the US has banned Chinese data center gear while Beijing grounds its AI talent, with both sides guarding models, supply chains and people. In practical terms this means a Chinese AI engineer can now build a system that reasons about the entire world but may not personally go and look at it. “It is fine,” said one researcher in Hangzhou, who asked that his name be withheld because he would like to see an airport again one day. “I have trained a model on nine million holiday photographs. I asked it what Lisbon is like. It said the stock market there is also flat. I found that comforting.”
Foreign fund managers, for their part, insist they remain interested in China and intend to invest the moment conditions improve, a statement they have now issued in every quarter since 2021 using the same paragraph. A Singapore-based strategist described his firm’s position as “structurally optimistic and tactically elsewhere.”
Eyewitness Accounts From the Trading Floor
Those who claim to have seen the rally describe only glimpses. A retired schoolteacher in Pudong said her portfolio rose for almost an hour on a Wednesday in June before settling back down “like a cat that has changed its mind.” A taxi driver who trades on his phone between fares reported a single technology share climbing six percent while he was in a tunnel. By the time he emerged it had gone. He has since refused to drive through tunnels and now takes the bridge, adding twenty minutes to every airport run. The Lujiazui Office has logged 4,100 such sightings this year and verified none. It has, however, opened a telephone line for shareholders who wish to describe what they would do with a rally if they had one. The most common answer, given by 58 percent of callers, was “sell it immediately, before it leaves again.”
Sympathy From an Island That Knows the Feeling
The situation has found an attentive audience in Britain, a country with long experience of inventing things and watching other nations make the money. Writers who produce English satirical news coverage for The London Prat pointed out that the United Kingdom gave the world the computer, the web and the railway and currently cannot get a train to Manchester. The paper’s UK satirical news roundup has documented the phenomenon for decades under the working title “After You.”
Back in Shanghai, Wen said the office remains hopeful. A reception has been prepared for the rally, with a banner, a buffet and seating for four hundred. “The food has gone cold twice,” he said, adjusting the banner. “We reheat it. That is what stimulus means.” Bohiney Magazine will report the rally’s arrival, should it ask for directions.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
