GVIA Perspective | Goldman Sachs’ Landmark Report: 730 Trillion Yuan Household Wealth Reshuffle — End of the Real Estate Era, Equities to Take the Baton

For the past two decades, there has been one default answer for building household wealth in China: buying property. Real estate accounted for the bulk of household total assets, serving not only as shelter but also as the ultimate vehicle for wealth appreciation, retirement hedging and upward social mobility. Yet Goldman Sachs’ latest 2026 report China Household Balance Sheet has laid bare a fundamental shift: after peaking in early 2023, China’s total household assets declined for six consecutive quarters before stabilizing at around 730 trillion yuan in Q1 2026. The stabilization was driven not by a housing price rebound, but by deposit accumulation and financial asset appreciation offsetting property value declines.

Even more telling is the structural change. At the 2021 property market peak, real estate made up 67% of household total assets, cash and deposits 16%, and financial assets such as stocks and funds 15%. By Q1 2026, those figures had shifted to 52%, 25% and 20% respectively, with direct equity holdings edging up only marginally from 5% to 6%.

This is no ordinary correction. It is a decade-plus restructuring of household wealth.

I. Three Hard Facts Behind the 730 Trillion Yuan Figure: Property Engine Cools, Financial Assets Take Over

1. L-shaped stabilization in total volume, but dramatic structural change

While 730 trillion yuan in total household assets remains a staggering figure, the stabilization is being underpinned by deposits and financial assets, not real estate. Goldman Sachs estimates that nominal housing prices have fallen roughly 30% since mid-2021, turning property from a former engine of wealth growth into a drag on household balance sheets.

The five-year shift in these three percentages corresponds to an enormous scale of capital:

• Property’s share down 15 percentage points: from 67% to 52%, meaning tens of trillions of yuan have flowed out of physical real estate

• Deposit share up 9 percentage points: from 16% to 25%, reflecting still-conservative household risk appetite as capital first flows into savings

• Financial asset share up 5 percentage points: from 15% to 20%, but with direct equity holdings only rising from 5% to 6%, indicating most capital is still circulating in wealth management products, funds and insurance

2. Household deleveraging is only halfway through; capital will not flood into the stock market overnight

Many assume that falling property prices will immediately push money into equities, but Goldman Sachs cautions that this shift will not follow a straight line. Household debt as a share of disposable income remains as high as 140%, and debt repayment pressures are suppressing risk appetite. Drawing on Japan’s experience after its property bubble burst, the more likely path is “property sales / early mortgage repayment → bank deposits → gradual, phased allocation to financial assets”, a process lasting at least a decade.

This also explains the unusual pattern seen in Q1 2026: public fund assets fell month-on-month from 38.61 trillion to 37.53 trillion yuan, and bank wealth management products shrank by 1.38 trillion yuan to 31.91 trillion yuan. The real magnet for capital was insurance: original insurance premium income reached 2.31 trillion yuan in Q1, up 6.3% year-on-year. Over the same period, insurance funds’ total investable assets hit 39.4 trillion yuan, with roughly 5.9 trillion yuan allocated to stocks and securities investment funds — an increase of about 201 billion yuan from end-2025 — pushing the share of listed equity assets to multi-year highs.

3. Cross-country comparison: equity assets still have room to double

Direct equity holdings by Chinese households account for only 6%, and even when including funds and other products, the share remains far below the US level of 34%. Goldman Sachs forecasts that by 2035, the share of household equity allocation could rise from 6% to 11%, and insurance assets to 10%, bringing roughly 6 trillion yuan in new long-term allocation capital each year. This is the most solid underlying logic behind the “golden era of equities”: not a short-term bull market, but a decade-long gradual migration of capital.

II. Equity Assets: The Real Battleground of This Wealth Transfer

Compared with fixed-income assets such as deposits and insurance, equities are the true battleground where future wealth will diverge at this crossroads. Notably, the biggest difference between this equity cycle and previous ones is that capital is no longer allocated evenly across the market, but is polarizing sharply along sector fundamental momentum.

Hong Kong’s stock market in H1 2026 is a prime example: excluding penny stocks, the top five best-performing stocks were all tied to the AI computing power industry chain, with the lowest gain at 281% and the leading stock surging over 1,500%. This is not concept hype, but a fundamental bull market driven by simultaneous delivery of orders, revenue and profit. Zhipu, Kingboard Copper Foil, Yangtze Optical Fibre, Iluvatar Corex and Gigadevice cover five core links of the computing power chain: large models, PCB copper clad laminates, optical communications, domestic GPUs and memory chips respectively.

Therefore, as an organization advocating long-term value investment, the Global Value Investment Association (GVIA) encourages investors to focus on computing power-related equity assets — a long, high-growth runway with deep underlying potential.

III. Computing Power Equities: A Full Breakdown of Six Key Directions

The AI computing power industry chain has moved beyond thematic hype into a three-stage delivery phase: capital expenditure → orders → earnings. To put market size in context: the global AI computing power market is estimated at roughly $27.7 billion in 2026, and is projected to reach $280.57 billion by 2032, representing a 39.8% CAGR. China’s intelligent computing power capacity is expected to reach 1,180 EFLOPS in 2026, with the AIDC market size hitting 177.8 billion yuan. The combined market for 800G and 1.6T high-speed optical modules will reach $14.6 billion, accounting for about 64% of the datacom optical module market. China’s AI server market is forecast to reach 285.9 billion yuan, making up 68.27% of the total computing server market.

We identify the following six directions as key investment priorities:

Direction 1: AI Chips — the “crown jewel” of domestic substitution

The commanding height of the computing power chain is chips. China’s AI acceleration chip market grew from 30.128 billion yuan in 2021 to 142.537 billion yuan in 2024, a 67.87% CAGR, and is expected to reach 381.39 billion yuan in 2026, with domestic chips set to capture nearly half the market. The logic is driven by two forces: overseas sanctions acting as a catalyst, and rigid demand from intelligent computing clusters. The risks are equally clear: extremely high R&D costs, difficult ecosystem migration, and continued dominance of Nvidia and AMD in the high-end market.

Direction 2: AI Servers — the most certain segment of volume and price growth

China’s AI server market is projected to reach 285.9 billion yuan in 2026, with global shipments expected at 3.7–3.82 million units, up 28%–51.3% year-on-year. As the physical carrier that turns chips into usable computing power, servers offer the highest order visibility.

Direction 3: Optical Modules — fastest earnings delivery, strongest global competitiveness

Optical modules are one of the few segments in China’s AI computing power chain with global pricing power. The combined 800G and 1.6T market will reach $14.6 billion in 2026; 800G shipments could exceed 40 million units, and 1.6T is entering a critical commercialization phase. This segment benefits from both overseas demand tailwinds and technological iteration, but carries the risk that falling behind on speed upgrades can quickly erode competitive advantages.

Direction 4: IDC / Intelligent Computing Centers & Computing Power Scheduling — policy dividends of the “computing power grid”

In 2026, seven government bodies including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guidelines to promote computing power interconnection, integrating dispersed resources into a “unified grid” so that small and medium-sized enterprises can access AI computing power like purchasing data packages. This means IDCs are truly shifting from a real estate-driven model to a computing power operation model.

The supporting liquid cooling segment cannot be overlooked: liquid cooling penetration is set to rise from 16.9% to 65.3%, with companies such as Inwinic, Shenling Environment and GaoLian Shares as direct beneficiaries.

Direction 5: PCB / Memory / Interconnect — the easily overlooked “essential consumables”

AI server power consumption has exceeded 100kW, and whole-cabinet deliveries are up 185% year-on-year, directly driving demand for high-end PCBs, HBM memory and high-speed interconnects. These segments may not have the highest unit prices, but their “pick-and-shovel” nature often delivers stronger earnings elasticity than system integrators.

Direction 6: Cloud Platforms & Large Models — the final link from hardware to applications

The computing power cycle only closes when it lands in real applications. Zhipu, the top gainer on the Hong Kong market in H1 (up 1,500%), is a case in point: the rollout of its domestic large model GLM-5.2, combined with A-share listing expectations, has drawn capital to its trillion-yuan industry potential. DeepSeek-V4’s deep adaptation with Huawei Ascend also marks a key step toward a fully domestic closed-loop ecosystem.

IV. Three Practical Takeaways for Retail Investors

First, stop treating property as the only path to wealth appreciation. The drop in property’s share from 67% to 52% is not a short-term fluctuation — it is a long-cycle inflection point. Investors should gradually reduce holdings of multiple properties, aging apartments and non-core area assets to lower their real estate allocation.

Second, do not chase concepts in the computing power space; allocate in tiers based on industry chain positioning. Conservative investors can focus on insurance + AIDC / liquid cooling / PCB (Baosight Software, Inwinic, Shenghong Technology). Aggressive investors can look at optical modules + servers + chips (Innolight, Foxconn Industrial Internet, Hygon Information Technology, Cambricon). For Hong Kong market exposure, Zhipu, Biren, Yangtze Optical Fibre and Gigadevice offer higher elasticity. Segments such as AI servers, optical modules, liquid cooling and domestic chips have significantly higher order and earnings visibility than pure large-model concept stocks.

Third, remember this is a decade-long structural shift, not a six-month bull market — stick to value investing principles. Direct household equity holdings have only risen from 5% to 6%, meaning most people have yet to meaningfully enter the market. Capital flows first into deposits and insurance, then into equities in phases. The right approach for ordinary investors is to “build a base of deposits and annuity insurance, then allocate a small, gradual portion to computing power equities” — rather than pouring all savings into hot sectors in one go.

The restructuring of 730 trillion yuan in household assets is essentially a microcosm of China’s economic shift from “land finance + property-driven wealth” to “new-quality productive forces + financial assets”. The real estate era is drawing to a close, and the golden cycle of equity assets has begun. Within the equity universe, the computing power chain — driven by the triple tailwinds of strong policy support, surging capital expenditure and accelerating domestic substitution — stands out as the most prominent direction of this great capital migration, and will be one of the core themes for at least the next decade.