China’s Big Three: Alibaba, JD.com, and Baidu in a Post-Regulation, AI-Driven Market
How the New Era of Chinese Tech, Cloud, and AI Is Rewriting the Investment Playbook
China’s internet giants have spent the last four years living through one of the most dramatic regime shifts in modern tech history. A sector once defined by blistering top-line growth suddenly faced regulation, geopolitical tension, a macro slowdown, and a consumer that pulled back just as global liquidity tightened.
Yet in 2024–2025, the picture quietly began to change. Regulatory pressure eased. AI emerged as a legitimate monetization engine. Cloud markets stabilized. Advertising shifted from pure volume to higher-quality formats. Autonomous driving moved from pilot to early commercialization.
Against that backdrop, Alibaba BABA 0.00%↑ , JD.com JD 0.00%↑ , and Baidu BIDU 0.00%↑ - three companies often lumped together as “China tech” - are now navigating very different strategic realities.
This piece breaks down where each business stands, what’s improving, what’s deteriorating, and what the technicals say about positioning in the coming months. The goal is simple: give both new and experienced investors a clean, practical, and forward-looking view of China’s tech landscape.
Key Takeaways
China’s internet sector is transitioning from regulatory suppression to regulated maturity, opening pathways for selective growth.
Alibaba, JD, and Baidu now occupy distinct strategic lanes: BABA as a restructuring e-commerce + cloud powerhouse, JD as the operationally efficient retailer, and BIDU as the AI + cloud + autonomous driving pivot.
Across all three, cloud and AI are the clearest multi-year growth drivers.
The charts show multi-year downtrends breaking, but each name sits at a different stage of reversal or consolidation.
For investors, risk exposure in China tech requires discipline, wide risk buffers, and a focus on balance sheet strength and FCF durability.
Pipelines, Environment, and the Sector Backdrop
China’s Macro
China is operating in a policy-managed, slower-growth regime. Property remains weak, consumer sentiment is cautious, and corporate spending has stabilized but not fully recovered. The government has shifted from enforcement-heavy crackdowns to codified regulation - data, AI content, fair-competition rules, cybersecurity, and cloud governance all have clearer frameworks now.
The economy is not booming, but it’s no longer free-falling. For large platforms, predictability is returning.
Cloud and AI
China is the world’s second-largest cloud market, growing from fragmented regional vendors to a concentrated fight between Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, and Baidu.
Public cloud spending is expected to nearly triple from 2021 to 2025.
AI is more competitive than ever. Models like Alibaba’s Qwen, Baidu’s ERNIE, ByteDance’s Doubao, MiniMax, and DeepSeek have created the most intense domestic AI race in history.
Consumer Internet
E-commerce is mature, not declining. Search and feed advertising are stable but slower. Retail pricing remains aggressive. Margins matter more than growth. The government is pushing platforms to operate with fairness, transparency, and lower merchant burdens.
Within this environment:
Alibaba is restructuring around profitability and AI-cloud.
JD is doubling down on operational efficiency and its supply chain moat.
Baidu is leaning into AI Cloud and autonomous driving to replace slowing ads.
Fundamental Analysis
Alibaba (BABA)
Rebuilding confidence, margin discipline, and AI-driven cloud momentum
Alibaba has spent three years in turnaround mode. Today it is financially healthier, strategically clearer, and operating with tighter cost control.
Earnings profile
Revenue across the last three years has been stable, with a clear pivot toward higher-quality commerce, local services, and cloud.
Cloud growth reaccelerated, supported by rapid adoption of its Qwen AI models.
Margins improved across Taobao/Tmall and Cainiao.
Cash generation remains strong.
Balance sheet is fortified: significant net cash, ongoing buybacks, and reduced investment drag.
Strategic drivers
Qwen 2.0 and Qwen 2.5 positioned Alibaba as a leading AI infrastructure provider.
Cloud revenue is expanding more than 30 percent year over year.
Consumer business is shifting toward retention and loyalty, improving unit economics.
Risks
E-commerce competition remains intense, especially from low-price platforms like PDD and Douyin.
Cloud pricing wars can pressure margins.
Overall, BABA is a profitability-driven, AI-augmented turnaround story with a solid financial base.
JD.com (JD)
Operational excellence, thin margins, and a return to basics
JD remains the most operationally efficient retailer in China, with a logistics network no competitor has replicated economically.
Earnings profile
Revenue growth is modest and margin expansion is slow but steady.
JD’s business is low-margin by design, but highly defensible.
Free cash flow is consistent due to tight working-capital control.
The balance sheet remains strong, with significant liquidity and manageable leverage.
Strategic drivers
JD Retail has pushed further into cost efficiency and supply-chain refinement.
JD Logistics continues expanding into third-party services, a key long-term differentiator.
Cloud and AI efforts exist but are not as mature or monetized as Alibaba or Baidu.
Risks
Price wars can hurt near-term profitability.
Lack of a clear AI advantage limits multiple expansion.
Slower top-line growth than peers.
JD screens as a stable, operationally superior retailer trading at compressed valuations, but lacking an AI-driven step-change catalyst.
Baidu (BIDU)
AI-first pivot facing real pressure in its legacy ad engine
Baidu’s last three fiscal years (2022–2024) looked surprisingly healthy:
Revenue essentially flat but resilient.
Net margin improved from 6 percent to more than 18 percent.
Operating margin climbed into the mid-teens.
Balance sheet held a net cash position of roughly 6.6 billion dollars.
But 2025 exposed the cracks:
Q3 delivered a 7 percent revenue decline and an 18 percent drop in online marketing. The company took impairments and posted a headline loss.
Meanwhile, AI Cloud grew more than 20 percent and autonomous driving throughput hit record levels.
Strategic drivers
ERNIE is deeply integrated across search, cloud, APIs, in-car systems, and smart devices.
AI Cloud is taking share with double-digit growth.
Apollo robotaxi continues expanding, with millions of cumulative rides.
Risks
Ads remain under structural pressure as spending shifts to short-video platforms.
ERNIE adoption trails ByteDance, DeepSeek, and others.
Regulatory and geopolitical risk is persistently higher for Baidu than for peers.
Baidu is the most AI-centric name of the three, but also the one under the most pressure from legacy decline.
Technical Analysis
Alibaba (BABA)
Alibaba has broken its multi-year downtrend and is in a broad weekly uptrend supported by the 20-, 50-, and 100-week EMAs curling upward.
Key levels:
Support at 148–150
Deeper support at 132 and 117
Resistance at 192 (supply zone), then 218–235 (Fib cluster)
Indicators:
Weekly MACD still positive but decelerating
RSI coming off overbought but holding above mid-range
Long-term Bollinger mid-band has flipped from resistance to support - structurally bullish
Elliott structure suggests a completed A-B-C corrective upswing with room for a consolidation before the next impulse
Interpretation:
BABA is the most technically constructive of the three, with a clean long-term base, a breakout, and a healthy pullback into support.
JD.com (JD)
JD remains the weakest chart structurally.
Price is below all major weekly EMAs
Trend is sideways-to-down on higher timeframes
Weekly stochastic cycles are oversold, hinting at relief
Elliott wave structure suggests potential downside extension toward the mid-20s if support doesn’t hold
Bollinger Bands show persistent compression with downward tilt
Key levels:
Support at 28–29
Major support at 25
Resistance at 33, then 37–41
Interpretation:
JD looks like it is forming a long base but has not confirmed any reversal. It remains a value-only trade until technicals clearly shift.
Baidu (BIDU)
Baidu broke out of a multi-year downtrend in 2024, rallied sharply, then pulled back into its EMA cluster.
Key levels:
Support at 111–114
Deeper support at 102–105
Resistance at 133–145
Fib extension targets at 170–195 on a confirmed up-leg
Indicators:
Weekly MACD rolling over but above the zero line
RSI cooling from near-overbought
Bollinger Bands tightening, suggesting an upcoming directional expansion
Elliott structure shows a completed wave (a), retracement (b), and a possible wave (c) into 145–155
Interpretation:
BIDU is at an important inflection. Holding the 111–114 band suggests a renewed move toward 145. Losing it risks a deeper correction.
A Simple, Strategic, Risk-Aware Trade Approach
This is a high-uncertainty sector. The approach below prioritizes preservation of capital, wide stops, and staged entries.
Alibaba
Best positioned fundamentally and technically.
Accumulate gradually above 132
Add on confirmation above 170
Stop below 117
First target 192, secondary 218–235
The risk reward is cleanest here.
