Morgan Stanley: China's AI ecosystem has the potential to create trillions of dollars in incremental market value.

Gokul Laroia, Chief Executive Officer and Joint Head of Equities at Morgan Stanley Asia, stated that the bank's assessment believes that the entire AI ecosystem in China has the potential to create an incremental market value of $30 to $40 trillion, which has not yet entered the market. Mainland media quoted Gokul Laroia as saying at the 2026 Shanghai Lujiazui Finance & Trade Zone Development Forum yesterday (17th) that driven by artificial intelligence and other factors, global investors' interest in the Chinese market continues to grow. However, the current capital inflow, compared to the volume that should flow in and is actually needed to flow in, is only a small part. He said that global annual AI investment has increased to around $1 to $1.5 trillion, with much of this investment wave being supported by the supply chain in the Asian region, largely in China. Apart from the United States, China is the only market with an independent and comprehensive AI ecosystem, from semiconductor localization, to data centers and cloud service providers, to large language models, and to applications, including digital and physical applications, the humanoid Siasun Robot & Automation field is developing, with hundreds of companies involved in the innovation and construction of this ecosystem. Gokul Laroia stated that in the fields of energy, energy transformation, and national defense, China's opportunity aggregation can actually meet all these investment needs. The bank's macro research analysts believe that annual spending in these three areas will increase from the current $11 trillion to $16 trillion. This implies that companies providing industrial infrastructure for these sectors will actually see their business scale grow. As business scales increase significantly, the demand for capital also grows significantly, and many of these companies are actually headquartered in China. Regarding the development of China's capital markets, Gokul Laroia made three suggestions: first, continue to promote the institutionalization of the market process; second, provide a wider variety of Chinese market products for global investors; and third, reduce the friction and obstacles to market investment, while maintaining regulatory transparency, consistency, and consultation processes. He said that these three suggestions will greatly enhance the scale, quality, and stability of capital invested in these markets.