A humanoid robot by Unitree Robotics waves hands to celebrate victory in a boxing match at the 4th Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, on September 25, 2025. Photo: Chi Jingyi/GT

Foreign financial institutions are increasingly upbeat on China's stock market amid the nation's notable advancements in high-tech fields including artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and stable economic growth on the back of stepped-up policies, according to the latest comments and notes from several foreign financial institutions.

In recent years, numerous global investors have highly commended China's rapid advancements across multiple sectors, as the country has made significant strides in humanoid robotics, automation, biotechnology, and AI. However, China's equity assets remain relatively underweighted in global investors' overall asset portfolios, and it is the trend for investors to further increase holdings of Chinese assets in the long run, Laura Wang, chief China equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, said at an event held in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province on Tuesday, the Shanghai Securities News reported.

Wang recommends a long-term focus on China's high-tech sectors, including AI, automation, robotics, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing, according to the report.

The A-share market has seen a style shift from "growth/tech" to "value/dividend" this month due to near-term factors such as risks from escalating China-US trade frictions, however "we expect none of the aforesaid near-term factors to cause any major style shift in the medium term," Meng Lei, China equity strategist at UBS Securities, said in a note sent to the Global Times on Tuesday.

In terms of style allocation, we believe "growth" could outperform "value" as the medium-term market outlook remains positive, according to Meng.

Foreign financial firms' positive views on China's stock market reflect their recognition of the potential of the country's development of new quality productive forces that are serving as new drivers of the world's second-largest economy, Cao Heping, an economist at Peking University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Despite mounting external pressure and domestic challenges, China's GDP grew 5.2 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

During this period, the added value of the above-scale high-tech manufacturing industry grew by 9.6 percent year-on-year, the NBS data showed. The development of new quality productive forces will continue to create new growth drivers, effectively stimulate independent innovation vitality and industrial upgrading momentum, and help to offset downward pressures and bolster upward economic momentum, an NBS spokesperson said.

"China's economy has continued to move forward steadily despite multiple headwinds. The rollout of a series of incremental policy measures has effectively boosted public expectations," Jacky Zou, chairman of KPMG China, was quoted as saying in a press release sent to the Global Times on Tuesday. 

Chinese CEOs' recognition of the value of AI has risen markedly, with 86 percent of respondents of our latest survey expecting to see returns on AI investments within three years, compared with just 18 percent last year. This surge in confidence signals that the realization of AI's value is accelerating, and that the technology is poised to profoundly reshape future industrial competition, Zou said.

The country's phenomenal innovations have caught global attention this year, from Unitree Robotics' humanoid robots' performance becoming a hot topic at the Spring Festival Gala and DeepSeek's AI large-language model capturing global attention to BYD's new battery and charging system that allows an electric vehicle to gain 400 kilometers of range in just five minutes.

The phenomenon underscores the prodigious dynamism in China's tech field. China has risen to the 10th position in the global innovation ranking for 2025, up one spot from the previous year, marking its first entry into the top 10, the World Intellectual Property Organization said on September 16.

Looking ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), as the national "AI+" strategy takes deeper root and the industrial ecosystem continues to mature, the integration of AI with the real economy will gather pace - injecting powerful new momentum into China's high-quality development, Zou said.