In the AI era, what should we do most?
The answer may be a bit counterintuitive. What we should do most is reduce our dependence on AI and maintain the independence of our brains and minds.
Because many studies have proven that AI is eroding our brains.
In 2025, MIT released a 206-page research report pointing to the impact of long-term use of AI on the brain.
The study recruited students from prestigious universities such as Harvard and MIT to analyze brain changes by writing reports.
The experiment is divided into three groups:
One group can only rely on pure brain activity without the help of AI; the other group can use search engines such as Google; and the third group is the AI group, which can complete the project with the help of ChatGPT.
What was the result? The pure brain students had the strongest brain activity and the widest and tightest neural network connections, followed by the Google group, and the AI group had the weakest brain coupling.
MIT researchers vividly described the brain activity process of the pure brain group as being like several people discussing in a room, with you coming and going, and information constantly colliding.
The AI group, on the other hand, was more like a person talking to a universal microphone, with a lonely brain, as if it was lying flat.
The researchers also said that when the AI team wrote the report, they obviously had no sense of belonging and had little impression of the article afterwards. More than 83% of people could not even quote previously written content.
The conclusion is a bit cruel. If AI is used for a long time, it may damage the user's learning ability, especially young people. According to Guyu Planet’s article, there are many similar studies at home and abroad, and the conclusions are also consistent.
The director of the Black Hole Project at Harvard University said worriedly that what he is most worried about is not that AI will take away jobs, but that it will reduce human cognitive abilities.
We must find a way to protect the human brain’s most valuable assets: critical thinking, empathy, imagination for the future, and innovation.
If we can't find it, human thought will be completely homogenized, just like the situation in the American TV series "The Rejoicers," which is the end of thought.
Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University paints a picture of what a sci-fi apocalypse might look like.
There may once have been a very brilliant civilization in a corner of the universe, which also created extremely advanced AI. Gradually, this civilization became addicted to the virtual world built by AI and instant gratification, became self-isolated, and eventually lost its ambition to reach the stars and the sea.
When the spark of thought is extinct, when homogeneity reaches its peak, there will be no more civilization, everything will fall into deathly silence, and only perfect AI will remain.
Global stock markets surged, but Hong Kong stocks fell behind?
Since the Spring Festival, Asia-Pacific stock markets have hit new highs repeatedly, but Hong Kong stocks have been a little lonely.
Even though funds from the south are still pouring in, with the inflow reaching a huge scale of 5.26 trillion, the trend of the Hang Seng Index has not improved accordingly.
In addition to the byte effect and AI fear we have analyzed before, the market pressure caused by too many IPOs is also an important reason.
According to Wind data quoted by the Associated Press, as of February 24, 24 companies have completed Hong Kong IPOs, with a total financing amount of HK$89.226 billion, 10 times that of the same period last year.
In 2 months, Hong Kong stocks have completed 25% of the funds raised in 2025.
According to a report from China.com on February 23, as of the first trading day after the Spring Festival, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that 488 companies were queuing up for listing.
According to the current trend, 2026 may become the double record-breaker for the amount of funds raised and the number of listed companies in the history of Hong Kong stocks.
From an industry perspective, corporate financing is a good thing, but from a market perspective, an imbalance in supply and demand will cause Hong Kong stocks to fall into weakness, ultimately affecting their ability to raise funds.
In addition, many people have observed that the trend of Hong Kong stocks, especially Hang Seng Technology, is highly consistent with Bitcoin. Both reached highs in early October 2025, and then adjusted all the way to the present (as of February 27, the price of Bitcoin dropped from a high of 120,000 to 68,000).
Apart from the wind direction preference of international capital, there is not much substantive evidence for the correlation between Bitcoin and Hong Kong stocks. However, the convergence of trends proves that funds going south do not have a say in Hong Kong stocks.
Let’s talk about A shares. Recently, the trend of A-shares has been divided, the rotation of technology stocks has accelerated, and some traditional industries have been relatively strong.
Why did traditional industries begin to rise? In addition to lower valuations and style switching, expectations in traditional fields are also changing.
According to a report by Securities Daily on February 25, policy interest rates may be lowered in the second quarter of 2026, which will push LPR lower.
The report also said that perhaps supervision will separately guide the 5-year LPR, which means that the mortgage interest rate will be lowered, and the government will also provide targeted interest discounts.
If the above-mentioned measures are implemented, they will undoubtedly be more beneficial to the property market.
On February 25, Shanghai issued the "Shanghai 7 Measures" without warning, further relaxing the threshold for home purchases and increasing the amount of provident funds. The stimulus in Shanghai breaks the regulatory practice of Guangzhou and Shenzhen first and then Beijing and Shanghai, and there is a strong trend of increasing stimulus.
After Shanghai, big news also came from the Guangzhou property market.
On February 25, according to China News Agency, a new land king was sold at the Machang site in Tianhe District, Guangzhou. After 243 rounds and nearly nine hours of fierce bidding, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Yuexiu Group finally obtained the land at a premium rate of 26.6%, a price of 23.60365 billion yuan, and a floor price of 85,500 yuan per square meter.
The reason why Tianhe District Racecourse is so difficult to grab is mainly because it is located in the core area of Guangzhou CBD, the geometric center of Zhujiang New Town, Pazhou CBD, Guangzhou International Financial City and other landmarks.
According to the plan, the future positioning of the racecourse site is mainly to meet the improvement needs of high-net-worth individuals.
In this round of property market downturn, improved houses and luxury homes in first-tier cities have relatively resisted the decline, and some have even risen against the trend. The performance of the racecourse in Tianhe District, Guangzhou has further consolidated the structural characteristics of the property market.
Before the Two Sessions, real estate boom continued, causing many people to change their expectations for the Two Sessions.
For example, Morgan Stanley pointed out in its latest research report that although more than 60% of provinces have lowered their GDP growth targets in 2026, the government may still anchor at 5% during the upcoming two sessions.
To this end, the broad fiscal deficit rate may be maintained at 11.6% of GDP. If the economy slows down, more fiscal policies may be added.
According to Wall Street News, as of February 25, the scale of local government bond issuance nationwide has reached 2.28 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 20%.
The ability to maintain rapid growth despite a high base in 2025 shows that policy will not tolerate a slowdown in economic growth.
In addition to changes in overall expectations, brokerages, the engine of the bull market that is closely related to the index, are also quietly working hard.
According to reports from Brokerage China, the scale of bond issuance by brokers in 2025 will reach 1.89 trillion, a year-on-year increase of nearly 40%.
Galaxy Securities, Huatai Securities, CITIC Securities, China Merchants Securities, GF Securities and other bond issuance scales have exceeded 100 billion yuan, becoming the main force in bond issuance financing for securities companies.
The situation in 2026 is even more exaggerated. According to media reports such as the Financial Associated Press, as of February 24, in two months, securities firms had issued 426.04 billion yuan in bonds, a significant year-on-year increase of 243.97%.
The amount of approved and unissued bonds currently exceeds 300 billion, and huge financing is on the way.
According to Dongcai Choice, similar to 2025, leading securities firms are still the main force in bond issuance, with 12 securities firms issuing a total of 321.64 billion yuan in bonds, accounting for 75.5%.
Among them, Cathay Haitong topped the list with a bond issuance of 54.5 billion yuan, and the second place, CITIC Securities, also issued a bond of 46.8 billion yuan during the year.
Behind the large-scale financing by securities companies, in addition to taking advantage of the low interest rate environment to improve their financial situation, they may also be optimistic about the market outlook and hope that their self-operated business and financing business will benefit.
Seeing the changes in China's expectations, many major foreign banks have raised their stock market tone.
On February 26, according to Bloomberg, UBS Securities Asia predicted that as rising inflation expectations translate into improved corporate profits, China’s stock market may rise another 20%.
In addition to UBS, major international banks such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and HSBC have all expressed optimism about A-shares in 2026, with the lowest growth forecasts being more than 6%.
In the technology war, why are South Korea and Japan the big winners?
The most distinctive feature of the recent global market is that hardware is king and software is the bandit. All markets dominated by AI hardware have performed very well.
The Korean stock market has experienced an abnormal trend, with the index rising nearly 50% in 2 months. Although Japan is slow, it continues to hit new highs.
On February 25, AI hardware leader Nvidia’s performance exceeded expectations again, further strengthening the market’s confidence in AI hardware.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, data center revenue surged 75% year-on-year, with network revenue increasing by more than 260%. As Blackwell's volume and yield rate increased, gross profit exceeded 75%, hitting a one-and-a-half-year high.
For the first quarter of 2026, Huang Jiaozhu also gave optimistic guidance. Revenue in the first quarter is expected to grow by 77%, exceeding the market's most optimistic expectations by 4%.
In today's market, it is a consensus that Nvidia's performance is good. Only when it stabilizes can other younger brothers have room to take off.
As for Nvidia itself, it is too difficult for a 5 trillion whale to fly. Just one day after the results were released, Nvidia's stock price fell 5%, and the performance stimulus came to an abrupt end.
From the perspective of capital flow, the market clearly prefers the Korean and Japanese stock markets, where AI hardware is concentrated, rather than the U.S. market, where software accounts for a higher proportion.
Bank of America cited data from EPFR Global that the U.S. stock market's share of net inflows into global equity funds has fallen to its lowest point in 2020.
Europe, Japan and other regions have taken over the funds that flowed into the United States in the past, with annual net inflows reaching US$125 billion.
This trend has become more obvious recently. According to Bank of America statistics on February 23, global equity funds have experienced record inflows into the Korean stock market in the past four weeks, with inflows reaching US$17.7 billion.
The boom in the Korean stock market has made the whole of South Korea crazy. According to a report by Phoenix Finance on February 26, the number of retail accounts opened in South Korea has reached 100 million. Considering that South Korea has a population of only 50 million, this means that one person has at least two accounts.
Another statistics shows that active retail investors in South Korea currently account for about one-third of the population, which is four times higher than before the special period.
Imagine if everyone in China had two accounts and one-third of the people were trading in the stock market, what would the stock market look like?
Having said that, why do global funds look down on the United States and favor South Korea and Japan? The main reasons are the intensifying panic about AI and the unprecedented uncertainty of the competitive landscape.
Recently, Citrini Research released an in-depth scenario report called "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis".
The report looks at AI changes from the perspective of June 2028 and believes that the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence will lead to a large number of white-collar job losses, a drop in consumer spending, a large number of defaults on loan businesses supported by software companies, and eventually the economy will fall into contraction.
In the future painted by Citrini Research, Asia is the structural winner.
With its intensive layout in advanced chip manufacturing, semiconductor foundry and packaging and testing, Asia is becoming increasingly attractive to global capital.
Almost at the same time as Citrini Research published its article, Anthropic, a big short seller in the US stock market, once again made shocking remarks.
Anthropic said that in the field of COBOL, IBM's main battlefield, workflow diagrams that took several years to draw in the past can now be completed quickly with the help of automation tools such as Claude Code.
COBOL is a high-level programming language born in the 1960s. It is mainly used for data processing and is the core infrastructure of key industries such as aviation, banking, and insurance. Currently, the vast majority of hosts running COBOL in the world are manufactured and provided by IBM.
Citrini Research also mentioned in its doomsday report that software will change from an “asset” to a “commodity”. In 2025, it will take hundreds of engineers a year to develop a complex CRM system. By 2027, top AI architects will simply dictate requirements and millions of lines of code will be generated in minutes.
If AI can easily replace the core businesses of giants such as IBM, the impact will be violent.
As a result, it is not difficult to imagine that IBM was sold off violently.
Defending its leading position, the United States is increasingly anxious
The technological competition between China and the United States is intensifying, and the United States is increasingly anxious about all technological fields.
The latest anxiety comes from the biopharmaceutical industry.
According to China Business News, on February 19, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Macari publicly stated that the United States has lagged behind China in early drug development of innovative drugs and called for thorough reform to simplify the procedures for testing new treatments.
Macari emphasized that the process of submitting and approving investigational new drug applications in the United States is too lengthy. The process from preclinical research (pre-IND) to formal human clinical trials (IND) takes 520 days, while this process in China only takes about 200 days and will be further shortened to 60 days.
China also currently has more clinical trials underway than the United States, accounting for nearly a third of global new drug approvals, according to Morgan Stanley.
Changes in innovative drug BD are also a source of anxiety for American pharmaceutical manufacturers.
According to articles from organizations such as Medical Rubik's Cube, since the beginning of 2026, China's innovative BD drugs have clearly focused on the early research and development stage. Of the 39 transactions as of the end of February, more than 50% were preclinical projects.
In the past, the market has been worried about whether China's BD can be sustained. Judging from the current situation, sustainability is still possible.
According to an article in The Paper on February 24, since 2026, companies such as Rongchang Biology have continued to receive large BD orders.
As of February 15 (there are no new transactions during the Chinese New Year holiday), 39 cases of BD have occurred for innovative drugs in China, with down payments of approximately US$2.953 billion and a total amount exceeding US$49 billion.
The down payment level of nearly US$3 billion has exceeded 1/3 of the full-year level in 2025.
It is foreseeable that due to the lagging behind in early R&D by large American pharmaceutical companies, more mid- to early-stage varieties from Chinese pharmaceutical companies will be snapped up.
Unconsciously, the development of innovative drugs in China has reached a new stage.
Many innovative drug companies that have suffered losses for a long time have begun to make profits. On February 26, BeiGene, the leader in innovative drugs, released its results. The announcement showed that BeiGene’s revenue in 2025 exceeded US$5 billion (specifically US$5.343 billion), a year-on-year increase of 40%.
In terms of profits, non-GAAP operating profits for the full year of 2025 will reach US$1.1 billion, soaring more than 23 times from US$45.36 million in 2024.
In terms of cash flow, BeiGene will earn US$942 million in free cash flow in 2025, which is a substantial improvement from the negative US$633 million in 2024.
In addition to the significant increase in revenue, the company's operating quality has begun to make a qualitative leap, and the performance in 2025 is not a flash in the pan.
BeiGene has given optimistic guidance for its 2026 performance, with revenue expected to reach US$6.2 billion to US$6.4 billion and expected GAAP operating profit of US$700 million to US$800 million.
Although China has made great progress in the field of biomedicine, the United States is also developing and will not stop and wait for China.
On February 3, Harvard University geneticist David Sinclair said at the World Government Summit that the FDA had unprecedentedly allowed his team to conduct human clinical trials of "rejuvenation".
Musk has previously said that death is an easily solvable programming problem, and David Sinclair agrees, believing that aging has a relatively "simple" explanation and is reversible.
According to the Beijing News, in 2020, Sinclair's team successfully regenerated the optic nerve of elderly blind mice and restored vision. This result was called "turning back time" evidence by Nature magazine.
Although there is still a long way to go to completely conquer death, the pursuit of anti-aging technology between China and the United States is about to begin again.
Fiscal revenue decreased for the first time in five years, a big game
According to Lianhe Zaobao report on February 26, after China’s fiscal revenue decreased for the first time in five years, fiscal targets for various regions in 2026 are not very optimistic.
According to estimates from a research report by Guangdong Securities, after the local two sessions, the weighted average growth of fiscal revenue targets in 31 provinces was only 2.7%, a decrease of 0.1 percentage points from 2025, the lowest level in four years.
The pragmatic attitude of various places has also completely broken the inconsistency between GDP and finance that has lasted for many years.
Lianhe Zaobao believes that with the slowdown in local fiscal revenue, the process of debt reduction may be affected.
Unconsciously, the systematic project of localized debt started in 2018 has reached its eighth year.
According to the provisions of a number of debt reduction documents such as the "Guiding Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Resolving Debt Risks of Financial Support Financing Platforms", June 2027 is the "deadline" on the policy side. This means that 2026 will be a critical year for localized debt.
What is the current progress of debt repayment?
Huatai Securities has an in-depth analysis that details the current situation of debt repayment.
In September 2025, the Minister of Finance stated that by the end of 2024, the scale of local government implicit debt would have shrunk to 10.5 trillion yuan, a decrease of 3.8 trillion yuan compared with 2023.
According to Huatai's calculations, existing arrangements show that from 2026 to 2028, there will be 4 trillion special bonds and other funds to replace or repay implicit debts, and the remaining 6.8 trillion may include additional special special bonds.
All provinces are accelerating the urban investment platform that requires withdrawal before June 2027. In October 2025, the governor of the Central Bank stated that as of the end of September 2025, the number of financing platforms nationwide had dropped significantly by 71% from the end of March 2023.
The hardest nut to crack is operating financial debt.
According to data from the central bank, as of the end of September 2025, the country's existing operating financial debt dropped by 62% from the end of March 2023.
Is 62% more or less?
According to data from the central bank, at the end of 2024, the operating financial debt of financing platforms was approximately 14.8 trillion yuan, a decrease of about 25% from the beginning of 2023.
Based on the linear decline in monthly debt, as of the end of September 2025, the country's existing operating financial debt will remain approximately 7.3 trillion yuan.
Judging from the speed of pressure reduction, operating financial debt has the slowest progress.
On February 23, Caixin quoted financial institutions as saying that financialized debt became easier at first and then more difficult. Basically, those that could be replaced were replaced, and the remaining ones may not meet compliance requirements. Compared with implicit debt, it is more difficult to resolve existing operating debt risks. Even if banks can cut interest rates and make profits, they cannot bear compliance risks in order to restructure debt.
Another veteran of local debt said that operating debt can be roughly divided into three types:
The first category is those who have debts but no assets, and can only rely on borrowing to repay the old;
The second type of debt can correspond to assets, but the assets have no cash flow;
The third type of debt has assets and a certain amount of cash flow, and can be continued in a market-oriented manner.
It’s the first two situations that cause headaches.
In order to deal with the problem, the main measures taken by local governments are to issue high-interest non-standard products and revitalize state-owned assets in their hands. Among them, revitalizing state-owned assets has become the main focus.
I still remember that Hubei was the first to propose the "three modernizations": "to capitalize all state-owned resources as much as possible, securitize all state-owned assets as much as possible, and leverage all state-owned funds as much as possible." One of the main purposes is to deal with the debt problem.
According to the "Comprehensive Report of the State Council on State-owned Asset Management in 2024", as of the end of 2024, the total state-owned capital equity of local state-owned enterprises was 85.3 trillion yuan, corresponding to the total assets of local state-owned enterprises of 278.1 trillion yuan and the total liabilities of 176.8 trillion yuan.
Total local administrative state-owned assets are 61.6 trillion yuan, total liabilities are 10.7 trillion yuan, and net assets are 50.9 trillion yuan.
This does not include the large number of minerals, water conservancy and other resources that have not been confirmed or evaluated. If the above-mentioned assets can be securitized, the apparent level is actually sufficient to cope with the current debt.
In addition to revitalizing state-owned assets, we found that there is currently a hidden line unfolding silently.
The "Guiding Opinions on Resolving Debt Risks of Financial Support Financing Platforms" issued in 2023, known as "Document No. 35", clearly stipulates restrictions on the financing of local state-owned enterprises, with the exception of industrial state-owned enterprises.
What are industrial state-owned enterprises? As the name suggests, the main business is to develop industrial business, with the core of operating physical products or serving the real economy.
According to a report by CSI Pengyuan, currently, industrial state-owned enterprises are not subject to strict policy constraints and do not need to consider financing red lines such as regional debt ratios. They are the best channel for local financing.
Financing is pouring in.
According to a report by The Paper at the end of 2024, more than 200 urban investment companies will transform into industrial investment companies in 2024. Among the newly established state-owned enterprises, about 2,000 have names or businesses covering the field of industrial investment.
Once the financing path is opened, supporting industry directions must also keep up to form a closed loop.
Traditional industries, mainly the real estate chain, have long been restricted from investment. In the field of science and technology, new energy and other slots are also occupied, making it impossible to accept more funds. Against this background, creating a new technology track has become a top priority.
What a coincidence, just when urban investment companies are undergoing transformation, industries such as robotics suddenly explode. Even if there are currently no implementation scenarios, even if they show up and dance, they must go all out.
From top-level design to public opinion propaganda, from policy introduction to the Spring Festival Gala offensive, everyone is working together to make robotics and other industries bigger and stronger.
In the secondary market, starting from 2024, the entire robotics track has risen again and again, and primary market financing has continued to rise.
Behind the soaring valuation of the robotics industry is the shadow of state-owned enterprises. In October 2025, an article in the Financial Associated Press pointed out that China's robot industry is ushering in a "state-owned assets moment."
The article stated that in 2025, special funds in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hubei and other places were intensively announced and put into operation quickly. The scale of the funds is often billions or even tens of billions, and they are all led by local core state-owned assets platforms.
In the third quarter of 2025, among the top 20 robotics companies by financing amount, 75% (i.e. 15) were backed by state-owned institutions.
According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, local state-owned assets have shifted from the preparatory stage to active substantive investment, and the delivery speed is very fast. A circular ecological model of "fund + industrial park + industrial side" has been formed in various places.
As the value of the technology industry in the hands of various state-owned enterprises increases exponentially, whether it is exit or refinancing, it can form strong support for localized debt.
I still remember that we wrote in several articles before that the name of science and technology innovation debt is science and technology innovation, and the actual financing party is local state-owned enterprises. One of the ultimate uses is to convert the debt.
According to reports from the Daily Economic News and other media, the issuance of science and technology innovation bonds in 2025 will exceed 1.7 trillion. Among the issuers, state-owned enterprises occupy an absolutely dominant position. Among them, the scale of science and technology innovation bonds of central state-owned enterprises accounts for 44%, and the scale of local state-owned enterprises accounts for 44.32%.
It can be inferred that behind China's great development of science and technology in recent years, in addition to technological attributes, there are also debt attributes.
This may be an unprecedented move.
In the era of real estate, no amount of money is too much for China to invest in real estate. In the era of technology, no amount of money is too much for China to invest in the field of science and technology.
There may be waste and idling, but the effect is obvious: scientific and technological achievements have exploded and debt pressure has dropped.
According to Caixin’s report on February 25, the weekly use volume of China’s large AI models has surpassed that of the United States, and its lead continues to expand.
The report cited data from OpenRouter, the world's largest AI model API aggregation platform. Data from the platform shows that from February 16 to 22, the weekly call volume of Chinese models surged to 5.16 trillion Tokens, a 127% increase in three weeks, while the U.S. model fell to 2.7 trillion Tokens during the same period.
Among the top five models with the most calls on the platform, four are from China, namely MiniMax’s M2.5, Dark Side of the Moon’s Kimi K2.5, Zhipu’s GLM-5 and DeepSeek’s V3.2.
Still on February 25, Reuters reported that before DeepSeek released its next-generation flagship model V4, it broke industry practice and did not provide early access to the model to U.S. chip manufacturers such as Nvidia. Instead, it allowed Chinese chip manufacturers such as Huawei to carry out software adaptation processor optimization work several weeks in advance.
Such changes indicate that some changes have occurred, which is quite meaningful.
Just as China's AI is making great strides, bad news comes from the American AI model.
According to an article by Unexhausted Research on February 28, Lao Chuan issued a blocking order on his social account, calling on the US government to completely ban all technologies of cutting-edge AI company Anthropic.
The reasons are very extreme.
Lao Chuan said that the lunatics in Anthropic made a catastrophic mistake. They tried to force the Department of War and force it to abide by Anthropic's terms of service instead of abiding by the Constitution. Anthropic’s selfish actions are putting American lives at risk, putting U.S. troops at risk, and U.S. national security is at stake!
… (To put) America’s national destiny in its own hands — not by extreme artificial intelligence companies run by guys who have lost control and don’t understand the real world! Thank you for your attention to this matter. Make America Great Again!
As soon as Lao Chuan's tweet came out, many people commented: This is the darkest day in the history of American business.
For investors, does Lao Chuan’s statement count as a bailout for the market?
After all, Anthropic has already become a big short seller of U.S. stocks.
