Looking for the next "Maotai"? These 10 Chinese Class A Share blue-chip leaders may become core assets

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The key to finding the next “Moutai” lies in identifying industry leaders. These companies possess wide moats and outstanding profitability. Through multi-dimensional screening, this article lists the following A-share stocks with core asset potential. They could become the cornerstone of your investment portfolio.

• Kweichow Moutai (the classic example of brand moat)
• CATL (global power battery leader)
• China Merchants Bank (outstanding retail bank)
• Ping An Insurance (comprehensive fintech giant)
• Yangtze Power (stable high-dividend hydropower leader)
• Mindray Medical (China’s medical device aircraft carrier)
• CNOOC (high-dividend energy giant)
• China Mobile (high-dividend telecom operator)
• China Tourism Group Duty Free (absolute monopoly in duty-free)
• Zijin Mining (global mining leader)

Key Takeaways

• Finding the next “Moutai” requires identifying industry-leading companies.
• These companies have strong competitive advantages and excellent profitability.
• Investors should focus on a company’s financial health, competitive edge, and valuation level.
• Long-term holding of quality company stocks can help investors achieve wealth growth.
• Independent thinking is required before investing and judgments should be made based on individual circumstances.

Top 10 Core Asset A-Share Stocks List

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The following is an in-depth analysis of these 10 companies. Each one represents the top level in its industry and has the potential to become a long-term core asset.

Kweichow Moutai: The Classic Example of Brand Moat

Kweichow Moutai is the absolute king of China’s premium baijiu market. Its core competitiveness does not come from complex production processes but from its unparalleled brand value and deep cultural heritage. Moutai is not just a consumer product—it is a social symbol and collectible, building an impregnable moat.

Core Investment Logic: The strong brand gives Moutai unmatched pricing power. The company maintains extremely high gross margins and return on equity (ROE) for the long term with abundant cash flow. Future growth points lie in the potential for price increases and the rising proportion of direct sales channels.

Multiple authoritative institutions have confirmed its brand status.

CATL: Global Power Battery Leader

CATL is a core enterprise in the global new energy vehicle industry chain. It dominates the global power battery market, supplying solutions to nearly all mainstream automakers worldwide.

Core Investment Logic: Technological leadership and scale effects are CATL’s two major moats. The company maintains leadership in battery energy density, safety, and cost control through continuous high-intensity R&D.

Its market share data clearly demonstrates its industry position.

The company’s technological innovation never stops, with a strong patent reserve.

• Technological Breakthroughs: The company has made significant progress in frontier fields such as lithium metal batteries, sodium-ion batteries, and all-solid-state batteries. Its latest fifth-generation LFP product has achieved new breakthroughs in energy density and cycle life.
• Patent Count: As of the first half of this year, CATL has nearly 50,000 patents either owned or under application globally.

In the future, the deepening global electrification trend and the explosion of the energy storage market will provide the company with broad growth space.

China Merchants Bank: Outstanding Retail Bank

China Merchants Bank is known as the “King of Retail.” It stands out in China’s banking industry with excellent customer service and forward-looking strategic layout, establishing strong competitive advantages in retail finance and wealth management.

Core Investment Logic: The moat lies in its huge and highly sticky high-quality retail customer base, especially high-net-worth clients. This gives China Merchants Bank lower funding costs on the liability side and better risk on the asset side. Its financial performance has long outperformed peers with higher net interest margins and asset quality. Future growth depends on the continued increase in Chinese household wealth and the resulting demand for wealth management services.

Ping An Insurance: Comprehensive Fintech Giant

Ping An Insurance has long transcended the category of a traditional insurance company. It has successfully transformed into a “finance + technology” driven comprehensive financial group. Its business spans insurance, banking, securities, and technology sectors.

Core Investment Logic: The moat lies in its massive individual customer base, strong cross-selling capabilities, and continuous investment in financial technology. Through the “one customer, multiple products, one-stop service” model, Ping An deeply binds customers and increases the value of each customer.

Technology empowerment is the key differentiator from other financial companies.

• Technology Output: Approximately 460 Chinese banks and over 1,800 other financial institutions use Ping An’s OneConnect financial platform.
• AI Applications: In 2024, Ping An’s AI service representatives provided services reaching approximately 1.84 billion times, accounting for 80% of total customer service volume.
• Ecosystem Synergy: As of December 31, 2024, nearly 63% of retail customers enjoyed health and elderly care ecosystem service rights.

The company’s future growth will be driven more by the deepening of its “finance + health & elderly care” ecosystem.

Yangtze Power: Stable High-Dividend Hydropower Leader

Yangtze Power is an ideal choice for investors seeking stable cash flow and high dividends. It operates six giant cascade hydropower stations on the main stream of the Yangtze River: Wudongde, Baihetan, Xiluodu, Xiangjiaba, Three Gorges, and Gezhouba.

Core Investment Logic: The company’s moat is its unique scarce assets. These large hydropower stations are important national clean energy bases with nearly permanent operating life and extremely low power generation costs, capable of generating continuous stable cash flow.

• Installed Capacity: The six hydropower stations have a total installed capacity of 71.695 million kW.
• Power Generation Capacity: Annual average clean electricity production capacity of approximately 300 billion kWh.

The company commits to high dividend payouts and is a well-known high-dividend blue-chip stock in the A-share market. The chart below shows its recent dividend yield performance.

Mindray Medical: China’s Medical Device Aircraft Carrier

Mindray Medical is the leader in China’s medical device industry. Through independent R&D and global acquisitions, it has established a complete product line covering three major fields: patient monitoring and life support, in-vitro diagnostics, and medical imaging, with products sold worldwide.

Core Investment Logic: The moat lies in its strong R&D innovation capability and global sales network. The company insists on investing about 10% of annual revenue in R&D, ensuring continuous technological iteration and product competitiveness.

Future growth points include import substitution in China’s high-end medical equipment market, continued penetration in emerging markets, and entry into more high-growth sub-sectors through mergers and acquisitions.

CNOOC: High-Dividend Energy Giant

CNOOC is China’s largest offshore oil and gas producer. It is also one of the world’s largest independent oil and gas exploration and production groups.

Core Investment Logic: The company’s moat lies in its exclusive rights to oil and gas exploration and development in China’s sea areas and leading cost control capabilities. As a cyclical industry company, its profitability is highly correlated with oil prices. In high oil price periods, the company can generate huge profits and cash flow and return shareholders with high dividends. As of now, its dividend yield (past twelve months) is approximately 6.35%. Future growth points lie in continued reserve and production growth, as well as layout in natural gas and new energy fields.

China Mobile: High-Dividend Telecom Operator

China Mobile is the world’s largest telecom operator by network and customer scale. It serves over 900 million mobile customers and owns the world’s largest communication network infrastructure.

Core Investment Logic: The moat is its huge network scale and customer base, forming a natural monopoly advantage. In recent years, the company has achieved remarkable transformation results, upgrading from a traditional communication service provider to an information service provider.

The company has a generous dividend policy and is an important choice for investors seeking stable returns. Its average dividend yield over the past 5 years reached 8.44%, with strong dividend growth—a 3-year dividend growth rate of up to 20.00%. Future growth points lie in the rapid development of digital services for government and enterprise markets and cloud computing business.

China Tourism Group Duty Free: Absolute Monopoly in Duty-Free Industry

China Tourism Group Duty Free is the absolute leader in China’s duty-free industry. It holds licenses to operate all categories of duty-free business in mainland China, especially dominating the key offshore duty-free market.

Core Investment Logic: License scarcity is the company’s most core moat. Policy is the most important variable affecting company development. The construction of Hainan Free Trade Port has brought historic opportunities to the company. Despite short-term challenges in the consumption environment, the company’s share in Hainan’s offshore duty-free market exceeds 85%, with a solid position. As Hainan’s full-island customs closure approaches, although competition may intensify, the overall market expansion will bring greater opportunities for leading enterprises. Goldman Sachs and other investment banks expect the company’s sales data to see an inflection point in the second half of the year.

Zijin Mining: Global Mining Leader

Zijin Mining has grown from a gold company in Fujian, China, into a mining giant with core assets worldwide. Its main products are copper and gold.

Core Investment Logic: The moat lies in its successful global M&A strategy and leading low-cost mining and smelting technology. The company has acquired multiple world-class mine resources globally through counter-cyclical acquisitions.

Overseas assets contribute the main production growth. For example, the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s largest high-grade copper mines. In the first half of 2025, the company’s mined copper production increased by over 9% year-over-year to 570,000 tons; mined gold production increased by 16% year-over-year to 41 tons. Future growth points lie in the continuous ramp-up and expansion of existing world-class mines, as well as strategic layout in lithium and other new energy minerals. These high-quality A-share stocks deserve long-term attention from investors.

How to Discover Your Core Assets?

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After identifying potential core assets, investors need a systematic methodology to verify them. This methodology aims to “teach you how to fish” and help investors analyze independently to find truly high-quality A-share stocks. It mainly includes three dimensions: financial health, competitive advantage, and valuation level.

Financial Indicators: High ROE and Stable Cash Flow

Outstanding companies usually have beautiful financial statements. Investors should focus on the following core indicators:

• Return on Equity (ROE): This is a key indicator of a company’s ability to create profits for shareholders. In the long term, sustained ROE above 15% usually means the company has excellent profitability.
• Stable Cash Flow: Abundant operating cash flow is the lifeblood of a company’s survival and development. It ensures daily operations, R&D investment, and shareholder dividends. Investors can conveniently manage cash flow from different investments (such as dividends) through digital financial tools like Biyapay and convert it into mainstream assets like USD.

If you treat “core assets” as a long-term watchlist, start by standardizing the basics—tickers, sector mapping, dividend policy, and disclosure wording. BiyaPay’s stock lookup can help you verify key identifiers quickly and avoid simple tracking errors.

When you review valuation and flows, keep an eye on cross-market transmission (for example, shifts in USD/HKD pricing conditions). Using BiyaPay’s fiat FX converter & comparison to capture same-timestamp quotes makes it easier to align “news → cost → tape” during post-mortems.

If you prefer to separate research notes from execution, enter via the official site or register, and check rule/page updates in the event center. As a multi-asset wallet operating under compliance frameworks including U.S. MSB and New Zealand FSP registrations, BiyaPay fits naturally into cross-market verification and risk logging.

• Reasonable Debt Ratio: Excessive debt brings financial risk, especially in economic downturn cycles. Investors should be wary of companies that rely too much on borrowing for expansion.
• Continuous Dividends: Willingness and ability to pay dividends continuously show management’s confidence in the company’s future and willingness to share results with shareholders.

Qualitative Analysis: Looking for Wide Moats

A moat is a company’s structural advantage in resisting competitors. Morningstar’s research shows that companies with wide moats can provide better long-term returns. Common moat types include:

Brand Advantage: A strong brand brings customer loyalty and pricing power. For example, Ferrari (Ferrari)’s brand symbolizes performance and prestige, which competitors find hard to replicate. Network Effects: The more users a product or service has, the greater its value. For example, WhatsApp’s huge user base makes it difficult for new messaging apps to compete. Technology and Patents: Unique technology or patents can form strong technical barriers, especially in pharmaceutical and tech industries. Scale and Cost Advantage: Huge production scale can dilute costs, allowing the company to offer products or services at lower prices and squeeze competitors.

Valuation Considerations: Good Companies Also Need Good Prices

The essence of investing is buying outstanding companies at reasonable prices. Overvaluation erodes future returns. Investors can use some basic valuation tools for judgment:

Investors should compare a company’s current valuation with its historical level and industry average. For example, the historical P/E ratio of the CSI 300 has fluctuated between 8.78 and 22.16, indicating that even a collection of high-quality A-share stocks has high and low price periods. Conducting valuation analysis before investing is key to avoiding buying at the “peak.”

The secret to successful investing is buying outstanding companies at reasonable prices and growing with them. The core assets explored in this article are exactly such targets—they are cornerstones for resisting market volatility and achieving long-term wealth appreciation. Achieving this goal requires investors to have important discipline:

• Patience: Wait for the right timing and let compound interest work.
• Independent Thinking: Do not blindly follow market sentiment.

Risk Disclosure: All investments involve risk. This article is for research reference only and does not constitute specific investment advice. Investors must make independent judgments based on their own circumstances.

FAQ

How much starting capital is needed to invest in these stocks?

Investors do not need huge capital. Many brokerage platforms support fractional share trading. For example, investors can use $100 to buy a portion of high-priced U.S. stocks. This lowers the threshold for investing in quality companies, allowing small capital to participate.

Should investors buy all 10 stocks?

This list is for research reference only and is not a direct portfolio recommendation. Investors should conduct independent research based on their own risk preferences and investment goals. Building a diversified portfolio containing core assets from different industries is a more robust strategy.

What is the reasonable holding period for “core assets”?

The core of core asset investing is long-termism. Its value lies in sharing the dividends of a company’s long-term growth, not short-term price fluctuations. Generally, the holding period should be measured in years, growing with outstanding companies and letting compound interest work.