The National Bureau of Statistics said on July 15 that value added of above‑designated‑size specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative little‑giant industrial enterprises rose 10.4% YoY in 1H. The World Economic Forum in late June added 16 new global lighthouse factories, eight of them Chinese, leaving China with the largest global tally; lighthouse factories are benchmarks for manufacturing digitalization and smart transformation.

U.S. semiconductor stocks rose in early trade; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 3.1% and the iShares Semiconductor ETF rose 3.1%. AMD (AMD.O) +3.6%, Micron Technology (MU.O) +3.5%, Western Digital (WDC.O) +4.2%, MARVELL (MRVL.O) +4.2%.

CITIC Securities says WAIC 2026 will be held in Shanghai July 17-20, with 112 AI forum sessions (64% of total) and two major tracks—AI compute and embodied intelligence—each attracting over 200 firms. Market-relevant takeaways: Tianshu Zhixin and others are set to unveil new compute chips that could speed commercialization; 10,000- and 100,000-card supernodes on display point to world-leading domestic system-level compute capacity, supporting cloud training; AI edge deployments and application rollouts continue; large models and AI infrastructure tech will be showcased. CITIC Securities therefore maintains a bullish stance on China’s domestic AI compute supply chain.