China's AI-Loving Gen Z Traders | 彭博商业周刊

【Para.1】When he started trading in 2020, Lito Chen followed mostly well-trodden advice, tucking his modest university student savings into the kinds of blue-chip stocks like liquor companies that analysts had touted as safe bets. They proved to be anything but, erasing his nest egg and eroding his confidence in mainstream financial analysis. So when doing research for his next round of investment picks in the first half of 2024, Chen turned to what many young people know best: artificial intelligence chatbots and the social media hive mind. Investing in a mix of tech, defense, mining and other stocks recommended by internet friends and chatbots like Kimi and Zhipu, he’s clawed back his earlier losses—and then some. “I’ll rely more on AI for stock selection in the future,” says Chen, a 24-year-old student in Shanghai. “Some of the stocks it picked for me really just kept rallying nonstop.”

【Para.2】Young, technologically savvy, even defiant, Chen represents China’s newest generation of retail investors. These bold Generation Z traders have earned a nickname in China: Xiao Dengs, or “little guys”—and their swelling ranks are propelling the country’s more than $14 trillion stock market.

【Para.3】From September 2024 to January 2025, the number of investors under 30 in China doubled, accounting for about one-third of the country’s retail investor base of 240 million traders, according to a study by brokerage Ping An Securities Co. and Hurun Research Institute. Investors under 35 (which would include the youngest millennials as well as all of Gen Z) are behind more than 45% of new trading accounts opened last year, up 5 percentage points from the previous year, local media outlet Jiemian reports. Yang Delong, chief economist at First Seafront Fund Management Co., has said 2025 was the year when Xiao Deng trades dominated the market with “unmatched flair.”

【Para.4】The Xiao Dengs’ preference for high-growth stocks has helped fuel the latest tech craze, while their rapid-fire trading style has amped up market swings. Their rise, marked by a risk tolerance at odds with their parents’ more savings-focused approach, has forced brokers to rethink how they engage with a generation that invests on its own terms. (Some brokers are rolling out cartoon character mascots, podcasts and even short, dramatic films in a bid to get a share of that emerging youth business.)

【Para.5】“Trading has become increasingly short-term, sentiment-driven and more influenced by younger investors,” says Yang Ruyi, a fund manager at Shanghai Prospect Investment Management Co. “Veteran investors fear pullbacks, while newcomers fear missing out. This divergence in mindset is fundamentally reshaping the dynamics of the Chinese share market.”

【Para.6】Outside China, Gen Z traders have been an economic force for several years, fueled by the rise of commission-free platforms like Robinhood, prolonged Covid-19 boredom and major (if sometimes short-lived) run-ups in crypto, meme stocks and even gold bullion. From 2016 to 2022, US adults under 35 went from being the least likely group to have a brokerage account to the most, according to the Federal Reserve. But young traders were slower to materialize in China, especially as investments in property—the country’s primary engine of wealth creation—remained a priority. A slowdown in the real estate market since the pandemic, low interest rates and policy support from Beijing have altered that dynamic, pushing a generation of highly educated but largely underemployed young people to the stock market.

【Para.7】With their help, Chinese stocks had a stellar 2025. The benchmark CSI 300 Index rose 18%, the best year since early in the pandemic.

【Para.8】To be sure, the sums being invested by Xiao Dengs remain pretty modest. Saving at a young age is difficult in China, where wages have lagged behind living costs and job security has weakened. Parents often step in to fill the gap, especially when children run into debt, limiting just how much risk younger investors can take.

【Para.9】Still, even if only some of the roughly 250 million people in this generation are actively trading, China’s young investors have a growing power to move markets. Their preference for tech stocks, for instance, has funneled more funds to sectors that President Xi wants to foster in competition with the US. AI stocks in particular are a favorite of the Xiao Dengs. “Their participation has increased trading activity in small-and mid-caps as well as technology sectors, which will help the financing and development of emerging industries,” says Yan Kaiwen, chief strategy analyst at China Fortune Securities Co.

【Para.10】The rise of the Xiao Dengs marks a reversal of years of reticence, when China’s stock market was widely seen as a gambling venue rather than a reliable source of wealth. Even now, Gen Z traders and their parents aren’t always seeing eye to eye. In Beijing, 32-year-old tech worker Jane Wang has stopped taking investment advice from her dad after he “strongly urged” her to sell her shares of Sungrow Power Supply Co., a Chinese renewable energy company. He thought they were too expensive; she expected they’d benefit from surging power demand for AI data centers. She was right: The stock rallied 130% on the mainland in 2025 and is one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in Hong Kong this year.

【Para.11】“I think my way of thinking is better suited to today’s market,” she says. When she tried to explain the AI supply chain to her father, she says he “told me he was listening to gibberish.”

04 检验题 

Read the following text carefully and answer the questions below by choosing A, B, C or D.

21. According to Paragraph 3, which of the following is true about young investors in China's stock market?

A. Investors under 30 accounted for roughly one-third of the 240 million retail traders between September 2024 and January 2025.

B. Investors under 35 were responsible for the majority of new trading accounts opened last year.

C. The total number of retail investors in China surpassed 300 million by the end of 2024.

D. Young investors' share of new trading accounts declined by 5 percentage points compared with the previous year.

22. The author begins with the story of Lito Chen to 

A. demonstrate the superiority of AI-driven stock selection over traditional financial analysis.

B. illustrate a personal trajectory that exemplifies a broader generational shift in investment behavior.

C. warn about the dangers of relying on chatbot recommendations for investment decisions.

D. compare the performance of blue-chip stocks against tech stocks recommended by social media.

23. It can be inferred from Paragraph 6 that young Chinese traders were slower to emerge than their Western counterparts partly because 

A. China's tech sector was less developed and offered fewer investment opportunities than Western markets.

B. Chinese young people had historically channeled their wealth into the property market rather than stock trading.

C. Chinese regulatory authorities imposed stricter restrictions on retail stock trading than Western governments.

D. Chinese investors traditionally preferred long-term bond investments over equity markets.

24. The author's attitude toward the rise of China's Gen Z traders is best described as 

A. uncritically celebratory, portraying them as heroes who are modernizing a backward financial system.

B. dismissively skeptical, emphasizing the risks of their inexperience and sentimental trading habits.

C. largely positive yet measured, acknowledging both their transformative impact and the underlying limitations on their influence.

D. purely objective, presenting data without any evaluative commentary on the generational shift.

25. Which of the following best summarizes the central argument of the text?

A. China's Gen Z traders, empowered by AI tools and changing economic conditions, are reshaping the stock market despite constraints on their financial capacity.

B. The Chinese government should impose stricter regulations on young retail investors to prevent excessive speculation and market volatility.

C. AI chatbots and social media have fundamentally replaced traditional financial advisors as the primary sources of investment guidance in China.

D. The generational divide in investment philosophy between Chinese parents and their children reflects a deeper cultural transformation in attitudes toward wealth.