Four Rockets in 48h 🚀 Germany’s China Investment +33% 📈 DeepSeek Tops OpenRouter 🧠

2026-09-21 | subscribe | homepage

Welcome back to China Insights Weekly. Here are some of the key highlights for this week’s edition:

• Four Chinese chemical giants, now among the world’s top ten producers

• Beauty sales rise 6.1%, with premium skincare leading growth

• Foreign arrivals climb 19.5%, reaching 61.3 million in eight months

• Mahjong crosses borders, as global event participation more than triples

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🚀 Headlines

German investment in China rises by a third and overtakes US outlays in the first half of 2026 (link)

German companies raised investment in China by a third in the first half of 2026, investing €5.6 billion (USD 6.5 billion) in total, according to the German Economic Institute's analysis of Bundesbank data. Outlays in America fell by nearly two-thirds to around €4.3 billion. The German Economic Institute attributes the shift to China's dual role as a major sales market and a competitive proving ground. German firms are expanding locally to compete globally, reinforcing China's position as a premier destination for high-value foreign manufacturing investment.

Chinese LLMs top US rivals in token volume on OpenRouter for 21st straight week (link)

Chinese large language models logged 67.46 trillion tokens on OpenRouter from September 14 to 20, extending their lead over US rivals to a 21st consecutive week as American models fell 34.7% to 14.21 trillion, according to OpenRouter data. DeepSeek's V4.1-Flash, released at the start of last week, surged to top the global chart with 15.8 trillion tokens, while four of the five most-used models worldwide were Chinese. Global platform volume reached 129 trillion tokens, up 1.57%, with Chinese open-weight models now capturing over 45% of all token traffic. Zhipu's GLM-5.3-Flash and Tencent's Hy4-preview further cemented China's dominance in cost-efficient AI infrastructure.

Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang top PISA math with a score of 612 (link)

Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang jointly topped the 2025 PISA mathematics rankings with 612 points and science with 597 points, according to the OECD's results released on September 8. Singapore ranked second in mathematics with 563 points. More than 760,000 students from 91 countries and economies took the assessment. US students scored 463 in math and 490 in reading, among their lowest recorded results; 8% reached the highest math proficiency levels, compared with 54% in the four Chinese jurisdictions. Tracey Burns of the National Center on Education and the Economy estimated that students in those jurisdictions were more than five years ahead of US students in math and roughly three years ahead in science. These results cover four Chinese jurisdictions, not a nationally representative sample of China.

China’s AI capex to double this year to USD 139 billion and pass RMB 1.2 trillion in 2027 (link)

China's AI infrastructure capital expenditure is projected to double in 2026 to RMB 932 billion (USD 139 billion), rising past RMB 1.2 trillion in 2027, according to Rhodium Group's survey of 13 listed firms. This is 15–20% of US data center investment, estimated at around USD 800 billion this year. Chinese AI firms rely heavily on equity financing and bank loans, with bond markets largely untapped. ByteDance, China's largest AI capex contributor, raised its 2026 AI budget by at least 25% to over RMB 200 billion (USD 29.4 billion), a fifth of the national total. Continued expansion depends on equity market conditions; state-led investment is likely to prioritize chips over frontier labs.

Four Chinese firms now rank among the world's top ten chemical producers (link)

China's chemical champions are consolidating their global position. Sinopec ranked second in the ICIS Top 100 with USD 66.3 billion in 2025 sales, trailing only Germany's BASF at USD 70.0 billion, while PetroChina placed fourth at USD 42.1 billion. Four Chinese firms secured top-ten slots, more than any other nation, outpacing three American, two European and one Middle Eastern company. Chinese producers remain the sector's most aggressive capacity builders, expanding their global footprint across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. With petrochemical demand shifting eastward, China's scale advantage positions its producers to capture a rising share of global output as legacy Western players rationalise capacity.