China’s banking wealth management market expanded to a record RMB 33.29 trillion ($4.8 trillion) in 2025, up 11.15% from the year start, reports Caixin. This comes even as average investor returns slipped below 2% for the first time, highlighting the disconnect between asset growth and yield performance.

The industry’s growth underscores the continued enthusiasm of China’s roughly 143 million retail investors, says Caixin, many of whom remain drawn to low-risk banking products despite diminishing yields. This trend has prompted financial institutions to diversify beyond traditional fixed-income assets to sustain returns.

The balance of wealth management products, or WMPs, rose 11.2% over the year, according to a report released Friday by the China Banking Wealth Management Registration and Depository Center. However, average returns fell to 1.98% in 2025, down 67 basis points from 2.65% a year earlier. The total income generated for investors reached RMB 730.3 billion.

PDD Holdings’ share price saw its seventh consecutive drop on Tuesday, pushing its market capitalization below $150 billion, as concerns grow over the intensifying regulatory scrutiny of its cross-border e-commerce platform, Temu, reports Caixin.

The stock has shed more than 30% of its value since a November 2025 peak, as Temu’s growth trajectory hits turbulence in key markets including the US and Europe, and revenue growth slows broadly.

Shares dropped as much as 4.9% in premarket trading on the Nasdaq before trimming losses. As of press time, its American depositary shares were down 1.93% at $104.66, valuing the company at roughly $147.8 billion.

Lacklustre sales at the end of 2025 will bode ill for the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) domestic market this year, reports the South China Morning Post, with low-priced carmakers under pressure to offer further price cuts amid an adjusted trade-in subsidy mechanism.

A bleak outlook could also prompt authorities to rein in a discount war as few assemblers are able to post profits.

“As deliveries failed to live up to expectations, all major players would have to slash prices of their vehicles to reduce their inventories at the beginning of 2026,” said Zhao Zhen, a sales director at Shanghai dealer Wan Zhuo Auto. “Competition is getting fiercer this year because of weaker demand for new cars.”

China’s housing construction has slowed to its lowest level in more than two decades, reports Caixin. The shift marks a structural turning point for China’s property sector, which is now focused on shrinking balance sheets and clearing excess inventory rather than expanding supply.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that nationwide residential housing starts fell 19.9% year-on-year in the first 11 months of 2025 to 392 million square meters, while new home sales dropped 8.1% to 658 million square meters. That means developers broke ground on less than 60 square meters of new housing for every 100 square meters sold, pushing the starts-to-sales ratio down to 59.5%—the lowest level since at least 2000. 

Official data over the past 26 years show how sharply the industry has reversed course. From 1999 to 2014, rapid urbanization drove surging housing demand, and residential construction consistently outpaced sales, with the starts-to-sales ratio often exceeding 110% and at times reaching 150%.

Preowned home prices in China’s top-tier cities fell for the seventh consecutive month in November, reports Caixin. The pace of decline is the fastest in more than a year amid a surge in listings that continues to flood the market.

According to data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics, prices in the country’s four top-tier cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen—fell 1.1% from the previous month. That marked a 0.2 percentage point acceleration from October and the sharpest drop since October 2024. Not a single city among the 70 tracked by the agency reported a monthly gain in preowned home prices.

The slide stems from a deep structural shift in the market, where supply has begun to overwhelm demand. Listings of secondhand homes on the platform operated by real estate brokerage Ke Holdings, also known as Beike, have surged to 6.5 million—up 60% from four years ago.