Here's what happened in China's markets last trade day (10/17):

As one of the nations that first opened its borders to China post-COVID, Thailand has benefited from a surge in tourism and investments. Thailand is working with China’s CRRC to further develop the country’s railway network, which will facilitate the transformation into an industrial economy. Thailand is already known as the “Detroit of Asia” and has long been a manufacturing base for carmakers like Toyota and Ford. Thailand is inviting Chinese consumer electronics giant Xiaomi to set up a manufacturing plant for its upcoming electric vehicle models. $iShares MSCI Thailand ETF (THD.US)$ $XIAOMI-W (01810.HK)$ $Xiaomi Corp. Unsponsored ADR Class B (XIACY.US)$ $Xiaomi Corp. (XIACF.US)$

After Central Huijin Investment’s decision to increase its stakes in China’s four leading commercial banks, ten listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have announced plans to buy back shares to boost confidence among domestic investors. These include Sinopec Corporation, COSCO Ship Holdings, China Mobile, China Rail Construction, and China Coal. However, the announcement did little to help lift the main CSI 300 Index, which is still wallowing near 12-month lows. Economic uncertainty and the lack of a powerful stimulus program from Beijing is keeping domestic investors at bay, even as the PBoC has been providing ample liquidity to the system. $Kraneshares Tr Bosera Msci China A Sh Etf (KBA.US)$ $iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI.US)$ $Global X MSCI China Financials ETF (CHIX.US)$ $CHINA MOBILE (00941.HK)$ $China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (600028.SH)$ $CHINA RAIL CONS (01186.HK)$ $CSI 300 Index (800122.HK)$

This puts the company on track to deliver 40,000 units a month this October, which would be another record monthly tally. Li Auto is next to BYD in terms of domestic brand premium market segment EV sales and holds a 5.3% market share in China’s new energy vehicle (NEV) market. There’s an ongoing price war in China’s EV market, with companies like Tesla also joining the price-cut wave to take advantage of an extension in subsidies granted by the government. Nearly 4 out of every 10 new cars coming out of the showrooms is now either fully or partially powered by electricity, making China the world’s leading electric vehicle market by a country mile. $Li Auto (LI.US)$ $LI AUTO-W (02015.HK)$ $XPENG-W (09868.HK)$ $XPeng (XPEV.US)$ $BYD COMPANY (01211.HK)$ $Tesla (TSLA.US)$

This latest iteration of its chatbot, also called ErnieBOT, delivers significant improvements in comprehension, generation, logic, and memory capabilities compared to its predecessor. The company claims this latest version is now comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4, the leading AI-enabled assistant platform in the world. Since its launch in March, Baidu’s ErnieBOT program now has 45 million users and 54,000 developers who simultaneously continue to feed the AI assistant with data, further improving its capabilities. It was made publicly available only last month. While still in its early stages, the global generative AI market is expected to be worth $1.3 trillion by 2032, with China one of the biggest submarkets. $BIDU-SW (09888.HK)$ $Baidu (BIDU.US)$ $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ $Artificial Intelligence (LIST2136.US)$ $ChatGPT (LIST1347.HK)$ $Alphabet-C (GOOG.US)$ $BABA-W (09988.HK)$ $Alibaba (BABA.US)$