China Drop-In: AI, exports and economic growing pains in the Year of the Snake

The Year of the Snake begins with China’s domestic economy still struggling to gain its footing, while its booming export sector remains firmly in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. And now one of its homegrown LLMs appears to be posing a direct challenge to American AI leadership.

To assess what this all means for the China macro story, as well as for the process of global economic fracturing, economists from our China and financial markets teams will be holding this special briefing on the key issues for the coming year. During this 20-minute briefing, the team will be highlighting recent research findings as they answer your questions on key issues, including:

• What our proprietary China Activity Proxy says about the economic outlook;
• How China’s export picture has changed and what Trump’s tariff threats mean for China’s external sector;
• What DeepSeek’s emergence signals about the trajectory of US-China competition and global fracturing;
• How the renminbi, Chinese bonds and equities will perform in this tumultuous environment.