Chinese EV stocks fell broadly in Hong Kong on Wednesday, with Nio Inc. leading the decline and five companies touching fresh 52-week lows in a session weighed down by a renewed tech selloff and rising geopolitical pressure from Washington.
Shares of the premium brand Nio closed down 6.5% at HK$40.82, the steepest drop among the major NEV makers, a day after the company publicly disputed its inclusion on the US Department of Defense’s list of “Chinese military companies.”
BYD fell 1.9% to HK$86.70, XPeng lost 2.6% to HK$59.70, Li Auto declined 2.1% to HK$54.70, Leapmotor dropped 4.6% to HK$37.48 and Xiaomi slid 3.2% to HK$26.32.
Geely was the standout on the other side of the ledger, climbing 3.9% to HK$19.30 on heavy volume of nearly 80 million shares, well above its daily average, while Great Wall Motor added 1.2% to HK$10.33 and GAC closed 0.4% higher at HK$2.42 after touching its own 52-week low intraday.
Geely‘s counter-trend rally came ahead of the stock going ex-dividend on Friday, June 12, with the gain extending a run that has made it one of the few Chinese automakers trading closer to its yearly highs than its lows.
Fresh Lows Across the Board
The breadth of the damage was more striking than its depth.
BYD traded as low as HK$84.25 during the session, XPeng as low as HK$57.40, Li Auto at HK$53.25, Leapmotor at HK$36.56 and Xiaomi at HK$25.78 — each a fresh 52-week low.
Li Auto’s intraday low marked the weakest level for the stock since it traded above HK$128 within the past year, while XPeng has now lost roughly half its value from its 52-week high of HK$110.80.
Nio, despite Wednesday’s outsized drop, remains well above its 52-week low of HK$25.80, reflecting the stock’s strong run since the company turned profitable on a non-GAAP basis and posted a 2026 record of 37,705 vehicles in May.
In US pre-market trading early Wednesday, the New York-listed shares of the three American depositary receipt issuers pointed to further losses. Nio fell 3% to $5.13, XPeng lost 1.7% to $15.25 and Li Auto declined 1.4% to $13.91, after the trio had already closed lower in New York on Tuesday, when Nio ended down 3.1% at $5.28.
Washington Adds Pressure
Part of the selling pressure traces to Washington.
The US Department of Defense added Nio, BYD, Baidu, Alibaba and other Chinese technology companies to its list of “Chinese military companies” operating in the US, Reuters reported this week.
Nio responded with a statement saying its inclusion on the list lacks justification, disputing the Pentagon’s designation.
The listing carries no immediate sanctions but tends to dampen institutional investor sentiment and complicates the international ambitions of the companies named, at a moment when Chinese EV makers are accelerating their expansion into Europe and other overseas markets.
That geopolitical headline landed on top of an already fragile tape for Chinese automakers, whose shares have been pressured for months by a brutal domestic price war, shrinking margins and a string of disappointing earnings reports across the sector.
BYD’s Wang Urges Patience
For BYD, the slide came a day after chairman and president Wang Chuanfu told the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting that the stock is undervalued by the market and urged investors to remain patient, as first reported by CnEVPost.
Wang said BYD will deliver better returns to shareholders through forward-looking planning, and repeated his expectation that the company will become the world’s largest automaker by scale in 2030.
Over the past year, BYD‘s Hong Kong-traded shares have fallen by roughly a third.
AI Rotation Drains the Tech Tape
The EV declines unfolded inside a broader Asian tech selloff.
Semiconductor and technology stocks across the region resumed their slide on Wednesday, tracking overnight losses on Wall Street, where the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.97%, the S&P 500 slipped 0.26% and the iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped 1% as a brief rebound in chipmakers faded on concerns over stretched AI-related valuations.
Upcoming listings of AI giants such as SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to absorb money that previously flowed into publicly traded names.
OpenAI confidentially filed for an initial public offering on Monday, while SpaceX is scheduled to begin trading on Friday in what is expected to be the largest IPO on record, at a valuation of $1.75 trillion.
China’s car exports jumped 73% in May as high fuel prices lifted interest in EVs abroad.
Beijing-based Li Auto is also leaning on buybacks to defend the stock, repurchasing about 2.63 million shares for HK$150 million under its May mandate, while Xiaomi launched a record HK$20 billion buyback program last week.
