China is redirecting the power of its $28 trillion stock and bond markets toward funding its technology competition with the United States, with memory chipmaker CXMT Corp.’s record Shanghai debut serving as the most visible example of that strategy, according to Bloomberg.
The shift marks a departure from Beijing’s traditional reliance on subsidies, tax incentives, and state investment to build strategic industries
Over the past two years, Chinese tech companies pulled in roughly $217 billion by tapping equity and debt markets, Bloomberg data show. American counterparts outpaced them by a ratio exceeding six to one, with Amazon and Alphabet among the biggest contributors to that gap. CXMT, formerly known as ChangXin Memory Technologies, closed its trading debut up 466%, ending at 49 yuan against its IPO price of 8.66 yuan per share after raising 57.92 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) — the largest mainland Chinese semiconductor offering on record.
The listing lifted CXMT’s market capitalization to 3.3 trillion yuan ($488 billion), surpassing Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to make the Hefei-based chipmaker China’s most valuable onshore-listed company. CXMT was the first company to use a “preliminary review” pilot that lets regulators work through key issues ahead of any formal application, cutting the path from filing to market to under eight months in a process that routinely stretches far longer. Days before the debut, a tech stock selloff prompted one of Beijing’s broadest market rescue efforts in years, with regulators, state funds, and major investors moving to stabilize sentiment.