Vol.165 Macro Talk 81 | The Tariff Shock, and Some Changes in China’s Consumption and Capital Markets (Recorded Apr. 3)

Summary

• Recorded the day after the tariffs were announced (April 3), 峰叔 (李峰峰) laid out a three-part framework for watching what comes next. First: whether the renminbi depreciates proactively; second: whether countries choose retaliation or reciprocity; third: how quickly US inflation feeds back into policy. His core view is that the renminbi may not depreciate proactively—especially against non-US currencies—because China wants to preserve its purchasing power across the 70%+ of global consumption outside the US. That purchasing power is a bargaining chip for building a reciprocal trade system beyond the US. The offshore renminbi briefly weakened from 7.26 to 7.35 that day before recovering to 7.31: “I suspect this will be a process of gradual normalization.”
• Even in the extreme case where the entire world implements tariffs “to the letter” with reciprocal retaliation, China may not necessarily lose. Long supply chains in products above the mid-value-added range provide a natural buffer. BYD produces 80%+ of its cost structure in-house: “If this chain has 15 links and I cut 1% at each link, that gives me 15 points of room.” The risk is concentrated in low-value-added products and smaller countries.
• The US$800 de minimis exemption for small parcels will end on May 2, with the burden landing squarely on US consumers at and below the middle-income tier. America’s “outside-the-Fifth-Ring” population will feel it most directly, and the effect should show up quickly in consumer confidence, creating an early window into policy backlash.
• China’s consumption is undergoing a structural shift: Shanghai’s retail sales fell from more than RMB310B to RMB277.7B in the first 2 months, dropping to second nationally. 峰叔 believes this may reflect a small demographic rotation, with high-net-worth and foreign-company workers leaving as newly registered young residents arrive, much like the process seen in Hong Kong. The “fewer but better” consumption model is also moving downmarket: Sam’s Club and Costco are entering third-tier cities, Pang Dong Lai grew out of Xuchang, and Haidilao’s new stores are concentrated below the third tier, with table turns meeting target. “Downmarket used to mean only cheap could go down; now good can go down too.”
• The financial throughline is the episode’s biggest investment call. Household deposits total roughly RMB150T. A reversion to the historical deposit-to-GDP average of 80% implies about RMB40T in excess savings, and the pool is still growing. With property no longer serving as the reservoir, “the money has to go somewhere”: quickly, perhaps over 2-3-4 years; slowly, 5-6-7 years, tens of trillions of yuan could enter capital markets directly or through insurance and other indirect channels. For China’s capital markets to rise from RMB103T to RMB130T-140T, RMB20T-30T of real money would need to flow in. The Ministry of Finance’s RMB500B secondary-market subscription to replenish the four major banks’ core tier-one capital is the opening move in this logic chain.
• A-share valuations may be modestly below their mean, while Hong Kong-listed Chinese assets may also be below average. The STAR Market is only RMB7T, while high-value-added manufacturing accounts for roughly 5% of GDP; the high-value-added portions of manufacturing and services could rise into the low double digits. “Incremental market cap will grow on the STAR Market.” For the first time, capital markets will shift from being a tool for solving discrete problems to becoming the “primary tool” supporting economic restructuring and household wealth, much as banks once did. 李翔’s personal plan is to wait until the tariff uncertainty clears in mid-April and annual reports bring expectations “back down from the sky to the ground,” then perhaps put more of his own money to work.
• On 朱啸虎’s broad exit from robotics companies, 峰叔 said upper-limb manipulation is “basically not capable of delivering the stories described,” while locomotion is advancing quickly. China’s path is for robots to be “disassembled and used” once consensus forms from the top down: dexterous hands for stirring yogurt, medical aesthetics, and lithium-battery coating; rescue work may need only legs plus load-bearing. The dexterous-hand company he backed “always had revenue, but has finally become profitable.”

Deep dive

1. Day One of the Tariffs: An Expected Surprise

• This episode was recorded on April 3, the day after Trump announced the tariff increases. 峰叔’s characterization was “an expected surprise”: the event itself contained no anonymous memos or back-channel rumors, but the magnitude triggered debate. The immediate shock: offshore renminbi weakened from 7.26 to 7.35 before recovering to 7.31 at recording time. Asia faced harsher increases—the larger the trade deficit with the US, the higher the tariff—with Japan and South Korea both above 20%, implying steep declines at the open.
• China was marked at 34% on the whiteboard, while the discussion also cited 54% in aggregate. 峰叔 then said the previously blended rate “should already have been 34%, I think.” The relationship among these figures needs more detail. The US Treasury Secretary later explained that the announced rate was a “ceiling” and therefore “negotiating room to move downward.” The two agreed that this was still the Trump first-term playbook: apply pressure and put a bargaining chip on the table before negotiating a deal.
• After the last trade dispute, Chinese companies moved production to Vietnam and Mexico to avoid tariffs. Vietnam has been hit heavily this time; Mexico may still be a route because the USMCA remains in place, although local production, processing ratios, and other standalone requirements would have to be met.

2. 峰叔’s Three Questions: FX, National Responses, and US Backlash

• The first question is whether the renminbi will depreciate proactively. Investment banks expect it to; 峰叔 guesses the move will be “very small or almost nonexistent.” The second is how countries outside the US respond. Once the US relationship is set aside, how will the remaining 70%+ of the global market organize itself? There are “two possible outcomes”: each country raises tariff barriers to protect itself, or circulation and reciprocity increase within that 70%+—“two clearly different directions.”
• If everyone moves toward barriers, “smaller countries will definitely come under heavy pressure”: they lack both market scale and supply-chain depth. China will also be hit hard, but it has a relatively large consumer market and sufficient production capacity to maintain some stability even in an extreme shutdown scenario.
• The third question is how large the shock to the US itself will be. With the announcement released after the close, the only immediate signal was index futures: “a straight line down in an instant.” The backlash means “an expression of dissatisfaction with the government’s rule and its economic policy,” which could weaken the policy’s resolve during implementation and negotiations.

3. Why the Renminbi May Not Depreciate Proactively: China Needs to Be the Buyer in Non-US Markets

• The core chain of reasoning is that US allies had already been “moving toward the middle” during Biden’s term. Signals include developments involving the foreign ministers of China, Japan, and South Korea, as well as possible easing in India-China relations and trade restrictions. If non-US regions are willing to increase reciprocal trade after the tariffs, China must demonstrate purchasing power comparable to the US consumer market to build that system: “Others are more likely to do business with you if you have the capacity to buy.” That requires the renminbi to at least hold steady against non-US currencies, continuing the posture maintained during the dollar’s 3-year bull cycle.
• In theory, as the world’s largest producer and a major supplier of intermediate goods, a renminbi depreciation greater than the dollar’s move against other currencies could help China absorb much of the shock. The cost would be renewed pressure on renminbi-denominated assets, including stocks and property, as well as less room for rate cuts and reserve-ratio reductions and a wider real interest-rate differential.
• The conclusion and the watchpoint: the renminbi “should hold its ground against non-US currencies while moving modestly against the dollar depending on conditions.” 峰叔 reiterated last year’s methodology: offshore renminbi is a watchpoint that incorporates multiple economic and financial factors. The framework now adds two variables: global supply-chain restructuring and China’s role in non-US trade.

4. Ending the Small-Parcel Exemption: US Ordinary Consumers Feel It First

• Parcels below US$800 will become taxable after May 2. The impact extends beyond AliExpress, Pinduoduo, and other cross-border e-commerce platforms: “the recipients are all pure consumers, generally middle class or below.” In Chinese terms, they are America’s “outside-the-Fifth-Ring” population. The resulting price increases and changes in living standards will be felt most acutely by this group and should show up more quickly in consumer confidence.
• Platforms had prepared for this, shifting from direct parcel shipments to importing container loads into US warehouses. Walmart is pressuring Chinese suppliers to cut prices further and absorb the tariff cost. In China, the NDRC is discussing how to prevent destructive price competition in automobiles, while the two central government offices have just issued a pricing law; the overall direction is to curb vicious price-cutting contests.

5. Services Trade: A Major US Export, and China Has Never Retaliated Against It

• 峰叔 highlighted an overlooked structural point: a sizable portion of US exports is services—finance, Hollywood, pharmaceutical R&D, and chip R&D. China “has not only never restricted services trade, it has also opened the market for wholly foreign-owned companies in services,” recently approving UBS as the fifth wholly foreign-owned securities firm. China instead wants foreign capital to help develop its own services sector.
• Services trade is difficult to measure. Take ByteDance: should software and technology licenses between ByteDance North America and ByteDance China count as exports by whom? “Is the software license intended to shift revenue and profit, or does it represent the actual value of the software service?” As in the early years, when more than one-third of China’s exports were produced domestically by foreign-invested companies, “it is hard to disentangle,” especially as the transaction becomes more intellectual-property-heavy.

6. An Interlude: Biopharma Is Bottoming Out, with Evidence from Three Angles

• At the headline level, Pfizer has established its third R&D center in Yizhuang. AstraZeneca is reportedly preparing to add more than RMB10B in investment in China around the China Development Forum, following Roche’s earlier moves. All 3 major drugmakers are increasing R&D spending in China.
• At the micro level, a pharmaceutical process-optimization company backed by 峰叔 saw orders suddenly surge after “an extremely cold year,” beyond what its capacity and headcount could handle. CRO companies in the secondary market have “at least returned to a reasonable, normal growth range.” After the previous pressures—centralized procurement, the post-pandemic bubble clearing, weak pipelines, and the late-Biden-term US Biosecurity Act—this high-value-added service industry “at least appears to be bottoming and recovering.”

7. Extreme Scenario: If the World Implements Everything to the Letter, China May Not Lose

• Assume there are no negotiations, no room for compromise, reciprocal retaliation by every country, and the policies are implemented as written. “For China, this may not actually be a bad thing.” Even after tariffs, the integrated manufacturing cost structure still leaves Chinese exports to the US with “room, scale, and an advantage,” especially in products with some value added. Low-value-added products are more difficult; above the mid-value-added range, conditions are better. “The more complex the product, the more supply-chain links it needs, and the greater its pricing room.”
• The vehicle is a BYD-style in-house supply chain. Across China’s auto industry, BYD is the only company that produces roughly 80%+ of its cost structure internally. An EV still has 10,000 components, of which it makes more than 8,000 itself. “If this chain has 15 links and I cut 1% at each link, I get 15 points of room”—a long chain can create roughly 15 points of cost headroom.
• Maintaining a long industrial chain requires 2 things: lower logistics costs across the network and controllable energy costs at the base. 峰叔 particularly cited waterway intermodal infrastructure built since 2022, aimed at making transshipment and customs clearance “faster, more digital, and less roundabout.” “From some of the logistics data I have seen recently, this appears to be starting to work.”

8. Integration or Specialization? Integration Wins During a Paradigm Shift

• 李翔 asked an aside: Ford, Tesla, and BYD all chose in-house production during the early or transformational stages of the auto industry, after which the industry moved toward global specialization. Will the cycle repeat? 峰叔’s framework is that when a product generation changes, “the high-value-added core components become a new string of things”—the powertrain becomes the motor, electronic controls, and battery. Each of the 3 evolves rapidly, yet they must also be integrated. “If you buy them externally, it is hard to capture the advantage those 3 things have at that particular point in a period of rapid change.” Vertical integration is therefore highly advantageous during dynamic periods.
• Once an industry enters a stable phase, as chips approach the limits of Moore’s Law and components become standardized, “you are investing so much just to move one tiny step forward, and it is no longer economical.” Specialization wins again because a supplier can spread that small battery improvement across every application using batteries. During a period of rapid change, automakers face another problem: they cannot properly evaluate the cost and technology changes embedded in a supplier’s quotation.

9. The Apple Supply-Chain Story: The Other Side of Global Specialization Is Heavy Control

• 李翔 relayed Li Auto’s account of a conversation with Luxshare Precision: when quoting costs to Apple, the breakdown must be granular enough to specify that a factory has 3 floors—“you have to tell me how much is on the first floor, how much on the second, and how much on the third.” 峰叔 added a firsthand example: a college classmate managed a production line at a listed Apple supply-chain company. “The production line, and the computers, control equipment, and software on it, all belonged to Apple. You only provided the people and the workers.” Apple had the highest priority in seeing problems in the production-line system and would email to identify the station where the process was failing. “Apple became more familiar with their cost structure than they were.”
• That is why suppliers say making products for Apple is unprofitable: Apple understands every link. But this was the situation nearly 10 years ago. Chinese precision manufacturing has since improved, and Apple “in principle should only need to be strict on factory inspections, audits, and finished-product and process standards.” Huawei-affiliated companies are also not structured this way in production control.

10. Shanghai Falls to Second in Retail Sales: A Small Demographic Rotation

• In the first 2 months of 2025, Shanghai’s retail sales fell from more than RMB310B a year earlier to RMB277.7B, moving from first nationally to second behind Chongqing. Guangzhou and Shenzhen also declined. Beijing was the only first-tier city to post a slight increase, while Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Hangzhou saw clear growth. 李翔 said Shanghai’s figures were “still somewhat surprising,” because the city is widely viewed as a symbol of Chinese consumption.
• 峰叔’s explanation has 2 layers. At the base level, per-capita consumption in first-tier cities “has not yet returned to 2019 levels,” while the Lunar New Year shifted into February, affecting both January and February. The more interesting structural explanation is that Shanghai may have undergone “a small demographic rotation”: from 2022 to 2024, some foreign-company and high-net-worth residents left, while a group of young, “not yet wealthy” residents arrived after registration rules were relaxed.
• The property market offers supporting evidence. “Shanghai was probably the fastest-recovering city in all of China in terms of second-hand home transactions” in 2024, but the recovery relied on price-for-volume, with cheaper homes being absorbed. 峰叔 estimates that first-home transactions among newly registered young residents may be recovering. Hong Kong is the comparison: some high-net-worth and foreign-company residents left, talent was brought in, the permanent population recovered to 2019 levels, and consumption from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong became a trend. In the past 2 months, “some of Hong Kong’s more expensive restaurants have also become lively.” Beijing was less affected by the calendar shift because its tourism is the Forbidden City, museums, and the Great Wall—“they are always there”—rather than Shanghai’s “eat and wander, wander and eat.”

11. Big-Tech Pay Cuts Change the First-Tier/Second-Tier Trade-Off

• 峰叔 has noticed a small trend: young people he knows are indeed “returning from Beijing and Shanghai to Wuhan and Chengdu.” The logic is that first-tier costs used to be clearly higher, but in years when compensation was strong, the pay premium “could exceed the high-cost component.” Now layoffs and pay cuts at large tech companies, combined with changes in state-owned enterprise compensation, have brought down both sides. “Income expectations may be falling faster than costs,” narrowing the gap between second-tier incomes and living costs and making it more attractive to move home or nearby.
• 李翔 added the same logic within a city: central Beijing inside the Second Ring Road feels depressed because living costs rise with proximity to the core, so young people are moving to live beyond the Fourth Ring Road.

12. The New Downmarket Question: Cheap Used to Travel Down; Now “Good” Can

• First- and second-tier cities went through a cleansing cycle. Before 2021, much of the consumption being washed out was “mainly for taking a photo, or proving that I had eaten or used it”—consumption for appearances. What survived was selected merchandise with a value-for-money foundation: “A reasonable concept does not mean cheap; it means relatively good.”
• These products are now moving downmarket and gaining acceptance. New Sam’s Club and Costco stores have reached cities below the third tier in economically developed areas such as the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. Pang Dong Lai “has managed to create a strong effect in Xuchang, a non-provincial-capital city in Henan,” essentially occupying the same category as membership clubs. Haidilao’s annual report shows new stores concentrated below the third tier, with franchising concentrated even further downmarket, while “downmarket stores all have table turns above 4”—its ideal metric is 4 turns per table per day.
• The line worth remembering is: “Downmarket used to mean only cheap could go down; now the question is whether good can go down.” 李翔 added that Walmart and Costco were not premiumization brands when they emerged in the US, but efficiency brands. Walmart was famously a small-town supermarket; it simply had to enter China through big cities because China’s GDP per capita was much lower at the time.

13. Underneath It All Are 2 Variables: Demographics and GDP per Capita

• 峰叔 reduces all consumption phenomena to 2 questions: population structure, meaning age structure, and GDP per capita. China entered a distinctive phase several years ago: property stopped being a high-growth sector and a primary investment vehicle; goods became less scarce; and services consumption began to grow rapidly. “All of this happened at roughly the stage of GDP per capita above $10K.” Economies inevitably experience these crossovers at that stage.
• The mechanism is straightforward: “For more and more people, owning something is no longer the main way to satisfy a consumption desire; experiencing something is becoming increasingly important.” Core household goods have passed through the scarcity phase of distribution, production, and manufacturing. “Fewer but better” becomes the basis for brand choice, which is also why services are developing so quickly.

14. The Ministry of Finance’s RMB500B Injection into the Big 4: The Balance-Sheet Logic Behind the Opening Move

• The event: the Ministry of Finance has cumulatively subscribed for RMB500B of newly issued shares from Postal Savings Bank and several of the major state-owned banks, including Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and China Construction Bank, in the A-share secondary market, replenishing core tier-one capital. This is one of the uses of the ultra-long special treasury bonds listed in the government report. Unlike the direct injections of 1998 and 2008, “buying from the secondary market is a sign of confidence in both the company and the stock price, and it is also a market-based approach.”
• Why replenish capital now? Household deposits are bank liabilities. When deposits surge, banks must expand their assets to lend and earn interest. At the same time, during an economic restructuring cycle, existing assets such as property loans may become volatile because of default risk. “The 2 factors together require raising core tier-one capital at the bottom of the leverage structure in proportion,” and raising it “to a level with some room” leaves capacity to support the economy.

15. RMB150T of Deposits, RMB40T of Excess Savings: The Money Has to Go Somewhere

• The key estimate: household deposits are roughly RMB150T. A secondary-market colleague ran a mean-reversion calculation: historically, household deposits were about 80% of GDP; they are now above 110%. Reverting to the mean would imply approximately RMB110T, leaving roughly RMB40T in excess savings. The pool continued to grow in the first 2 months of this year. The cause is precautionary saving, driven by uncertainty about the future and uncertainty about continued income growth.
• 李翔 cited an old line from Wu Chang: the root problem is the lack of a good reservoir for wealth—“I simply have nowhere to put my money now.” 峰叔 agreed and extended the thought: excess savings cannot remain in plain deposits forever. “Even during Japan’s lost decade and 2 decades, the money ultimately had to convert into different types of investment.” People used to save and then buy or upgrade homes. “Today they are not going into property—where will they go? That is the most important question.” There are not many assets capable of absorbing capital at this scale; gold and Bitcoin are alternative niche assets without sufficient capacity.
• One policy detail: after consumer-loan limits were raised, guidance quickly followed that rates “cannot be below 3%.” 峰叔 interprets this as an attempt to prevent arbitrage through converting mortgages into consumer loans, just as borrowers once shifted mortgages into business loans. Short-term loan rates move quickly and are highly linked to the policy cycle; the mismatch could recreate the risk of business-loan withdrawals and mortgage defaults.

16. Capital Markets as the Reservoir for Excess Savings: RMB20T-30T of Real Money Needed

• China’s capital-market capitalization has reached a record RMB103T, but that is only slightly above 70% of GDP, which is close to RMB140T—below the Buffett Indicator’s normal 80% level, while the US is near 2x GDP. If relevant market capitalization rises to RMB130T-140T and the increase does not come through state-owned enterprise holdings, “it genuinely requires RMB20T-30T of money to come in.” Some would enter directly, while some would come through insurance, following policies issued in the prior 2 days supporting long-term investment by banks and insurers and allowing insurers to establish secondary-market private-equity funds.
• 峰叔 called his timeline “irresponsible off-the-cuff speculation”: absent a world war, “in 2-3-4 years if things move quickly, or 5-6-7 years if they move slowly, this tens-of-trillions market value should probably accumulate.” History offers a precedent in the way similar sums flowed into property during the last cycle.
• Foreign capital will also come. Sentiment changed in the first 2 months on 2 levels. DeepSeek made foreign investors think Chinese technology “may be investable.” The deeper question is that sovereign funds and other ultra-long-term capital must answer questions on a 10-year-plus horizon. On the security side: will there be a world war? The immediate question is “what will be the final outcome of US-China competition?” Investors once assumed outcome A; they are now beginning to ask whether outcome B is also possible. Allocation changes with that answer. The order is: certainty and safety first, growth second, risk third.

17. A-Share Valuations and Structure: Incremental Market Cap Will Grow on the STAR Market

• 李翔’s key question was whether the assets themselves are worth buying. “It cannot simply be because I have money or because money has to come in.” 峰叔 lacks a precise valuation based on RMB103T, “but my guess is that overall it should be slightly below the mean.” Because A-shares have restrictions on capital inflows and outflows, “there is a wall outside the city,” so they may perform independently. Chinese assets valued through Hong Kong-listed stocks “are still somewhat below the mean.” The current expectation structure is that confidence in China’s stability and certainty has improved, and confidence in its long-term technology capabilities has increased, while short- and medium-term economic growth remains uncertain.
• The structural mismatch creates room. Of roughly RMB100T in A-share capitalization, the STAR Market accounts for only about RMB7T. High-value-added manufacturing is about 5% of GDP and less than 20% of manufacturing. The high-value-added portions of manufacturing and services “will probably rise into the low double digits.” Therefore, “a greater share of total incremental market cap will grow on the STAR Market,” dictated by the economic restructuring cycle.
• The question of consumer listings remains open: “I believe China has not stopped consumer companies from listing on A-shares. We may see consumer companies list very soon.” An imaging-technology company making action cameras is consumer electronics on the STAR Market; Honor also qualifies, and “in the end it will mix together.” A-shares historically did not fully reflect China’s economic structure because consumption and the internet were absent. “But now the adjustment is gradually underway, and an increasing share is reflecting changes in China’s economic structure.”

18. 李翔’s Trade and the Historical Repositioning of Capital Markets

• 李翔’s personal conclusion: “Perhaps by mid-April, I will put another tranche of my own money in.” The logic is to wait through the tariff observation period until the outcome is clear. March and April are the concentrated annual-report season for 2024. Investors will have to move from confidence in technology to checking whether it has produced economic results—“from the sky back down to the ground.” Once those 2 hurdles are cleared, the market can reprice China-US factors, valuation, and other variables. Short-term volatility is entirely reasonable; over a medium-term horizon of 2 years or more, the direction of capital markets absorbing excess savings remains unchanged.
• 峰叔’s historical framing is that China’s capital markets were previously built around “solving problems”: pilots, rescuing state-owned enterprises, full circulation, the SME board solving financing for private manufacturers after WTO entry, ChiNext solving financing for specialized leaders, and the STAR Market responding to the trade war. Now, for the first time, capital markets must support both economic restructuring and household wealth. “Previously it was a useful and rational tool; afterward it will become the primary tool, just as banks once were.” Buffett became wealthy through insurance as an indirect reservoir for capital.
• A related joke captures the financial essence. Online commentators say policymakers finally realized that people are not unwilling to consume; they simply lack the money to do so. The policy response has been consumer loans rather than direct transfers: “China has never done that, so it is uncertain whether handing out money would work,” while increasing incomes “would probably take 3-5 years.” The result is an amusing phenomenon: “People with money do not want to consume, but they are willing to lend their money to people who have no money but really want to consume.” The same applies on the corporate side: “Finance, especially banks, mainly does this.”

19. Response to 朱啸虎: Robotics Applications Are Not Imagined; They Are “Disassembled and Used”

• 朱啸虎 has exited multiple robotics companies and said that “the scenarios are imagined.” 峰叔 partly agreed with the current state of play. In upper-limb manipulation, “we are still a long way from doing these things today,” or “basically unable to deliver the stories described.” Locomotion, however, is advancing relatively quickly. It is still too early to call the breakthrough complete; for now, “just look at the legs.” Most widely circulated demos remain focused on hardware capabilities, particularly joint motors and degrees of freedom.
• China has a distinctive mechanism. Once a matter gains top-down consensus—policy sets the direction and the secondary market trades it—“too many people from too many angles want to be connected to it,” producing applications nobody anticipated. Three firsthand examples: a dexterous-hand company has applications in medical aesthetics and precision lithium-battery coating; after a semi-solid battery company announced its product, children’s ride-on cars, banks, and specialized-use cases came looking for it; and atomic-layer deposition, the most advanced semiconductor process technology, was “grafted onto the world-leading processing of solar-cell materials” because advanced processes were restricted. “These application scenarios emerged in the middle; they were completely different from what was imagined in the business plan.”
• The resulting form of robotics deployment is to “disassemble and use” the system. Stirring freshly made yogurt needs only 2 or 3 dexterous hands working together; it does not need legs, a brain, or a humanoid body. Earthquake rescue in Myanmar—where a Chinese rescue team rescued 9 people after roughly 70 hours—may need only legs plus load-bearing: carrying life-support supplies and detection equipment through areas at risk of collapse, while supporting structures and widening passageways.
• 李翔’s closing question was whether the companies 峰叔 backed could make money. 峰叔 replied: “The dexterous-hand company always had revenue, but has finally become profitable.” The other companies working on robot bodies, upper limbs, and lower limbs are not yet profitable, but all have contracts and revenue. “They are not just selling a sample for someone else to display; they are solving problems in real-world scenarios.”

Verification Notes

• The original transcript was ambiguous about how “34%,” “54%,” and the existing tariff rate correspond. The translation avoids presenting 54% as a confirmed combined tariff rate.