A Zhihu post published in late October and signed by Ji Ning’an (姬安宁) framed a sharp pullback in mainland Chinese and Hong Kong stocks as a “financial war” waged by the United States. The author’s entry point was concrete: on October 22, optical module maker Eoptolink (新易盛) plunged after its third-quarter results were judged to have missed expectations, and a group of heavyweight stocks fell in tandem, dragging both markets sharply lower and leaving investors with clear losses. The post argues that such declines were not a simple reaction to fundamentals but a concentrated expression of a long-running US campaign to suppress China.
The claim drew discussion because it links two issues usually examined separately: bearish US media and institutional assessments of Chinese tech valuations, and the real losses ordinary investors suffered in a short-term swing. The author concludes that the US dares not use military force against China, but financial tools are cheap and damaging, so they are more readily deployed.
Valuation talk, sanctions, and market linkage
The first layer of the argument concerns valuation narratives. The post notes that a US media outlet compared price-earnings ratios of Chinese and American tech stocks and concluded that Chinese tech stocks performed the worst globally in this pullback and could fall further. The author treats this as deliberate expectation management rather than neutral market analysis.
The second layer is the policy environment. The post points to continuous US government sanctions and restrictions on Chinese companies, arguing that such relentless action changes how investors price risk on the affected assets. Seen alongside short-selling sentiment, the author writes, calling it a “financial war” is not an exaggeration.
The third layer is market linkage. The post questions why A-shares and Hong Kong stocks often fall whenever US stocks drop, even though China and the US are competitors, even rivals, in technology and trade. Even sectors where China holds an advantage, such as dual-use items, were heavily sold off. The author cites Lu Qiyuan (卢麒元) in warning that pushing the price of core domestic assets too low amounts to handing opportunities to foreign capital.
The domestic institutions cast as accomplices
A key target of the post’s criticism is not the US but domestic institutional investors. The author acknowledges that US financial institutions wield strong narrative power, and that statements from the Federal Reserve and a few major banks can move Chinese markets. But the more troubling issue, the author argues, is how quickly domestic institutions react to those signals, cutting positions sharply at the first sign of trouble, amplifying the decline and leaving retail investors to bear the consequences.
That judgment carries obvious emotional coloring, but it touches on a debatable question: in a market where information moves in near-synchrony, whether institutional behavior converges or reflects independent judgment directly determines whether external shocks are amplified or absorbed.
Where the argument jumps
Attributing a single-day plunge directly to an external financial war still requires a leap in reasoning. Third-quarter results that miss expectations are company-level information, and a broad adjustment in heavyweight stocks can also stem from a combination of liquidity, positioning structure and market sentiment. Whether bearish US media commentary constitutes a “war” and whether it moved prices are two separate questions.
Still, the angle the post raises is not without value: the persistence of sanctions, the power of ratings and public opinion to shape expectations, and the transmission of sentiment between onshore and offshore markets are all real variables. For readers living in the US or watching China-US markets, the more practical approach may be not to label every decline a war, but to separate what is company fundamentals, what is policy risk, and what is merely emotional resonance. When external noise and domestic herd behavior appear at the same time, how investors build their own framework for judgment is a more useful question than whether this is a financial war.
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