-- 2025 marks a milestone year for shareholder returns in China’s capital market, with full-year cash dividends from listed companies surpassing 2.6 trillion yuan for the first time and share buyback volumes exceeding 140 billion yuan, Jianghai Securities observes. Against a backdrop of heightened volatility in global markets and rising geopolitical uncertainty, this tangible commitment to shareholder returns from listed firms not only underscores the resilience of China’s capital market, but also signals an accelerating shift of the A-share market from a financing-focused ecosystem to an investment-focused one, delivering a clear message to global investors of its steadily growing long-term allocation value.
The sustained expansion of dividend payouts is a direct reflection of the improving earnings quality and cash flow stability of China’s listed companies, forming the bedrock of the market’s resilience, according to senior analysts at Jianghai Securities. For full-year 2024, cash dividends from companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges reached 2.4 trillion yuan, a 9% year-on-year increase, with this upward momentum extending firmly into 2025 to set a new all-time high. Of these, 37 companies distributed over 10 billion yuan in dividends each for the year, with major state-owned banks and leading central state-owned enterprises dominating the rankings. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China topped the list with 160.17 billion yuan in dividends, followed by China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, and China Mobile, all of which recorded dividend payouts exceeding 100 billion yuan.
What merits greater attention from global investors, Jianghai Securities notes, is the systematic improvement in the consistency, stability, and frequency of dividend distributions. Data from the China Association for Public Companies (CAPCO) shows that of the 4,445 A-share companies listed for at least three years, 2,447 have delivered consecutive cash dividends over the past three years, a 12% increase from 2023. Among the 3,569 companies listed for five years or more, 210 have grown their dividend payouts for five consecutive years. Meanwhile, the convention of A-share companies paying dividends during annual report period is being reshaped. In 2025, 34 listed companies made cash distributions two or more times during the year, with firms including Mindray and 37 Interactive Entertainment delivering dividends for three consecutive quarters, making quarterly payouts an emerging market trend. In terms of return certainty, 466 A-share companies have posted an average dividend yield of over 3% for the past three years, with 133 exceeding 5%. The top dividend-paying firms recorded an average three-year dividend yield of 6.73%, notably higher than the treasury bond yields of major advanced economies, highlighting their prominent long-term allocation value.
Running parallel to the dividend prospering is a surging wave of share buybacks in the A-share market, accompanied by a transformative structural shift, Jianghai Securities highlights. Data shows that 1,495 A-share companies launched share buyback programs in 2025, with total repurchase volumes reaching 142.84 billion yuan. Of these, 293 companies spent over 100 million yuan on buybacks, with Midea Group leading the pack with 11.55 billion yuan in repurchases, followed by KWEICHOW MOUTAI and CATL with 5.99 billion yuan and 4.39 billion yuan respectively.
The core change lies in the significantly enhanced value orientation of buybacks, Jianghai Securities observes. Of the buyback plans announced in 2025, over 40% were for full or partial share cancellation, up from 38.33% in 2024. This shift marks an evolution of A-share buybacks from a primarily equity incentive tool to a direct mechanism for returning value to shareholders. Supported and encouraged by targeted regulatory policies, this normalization of cancellation-focused buybacks is both a demonstration of listed companies’ long-term confidence in their operational prospects and cash flow stability, and a key milestone in the maturation of the A-share market.
This dual boom in dividends and buybacks is not a short-term market phenomenon, but an institutional advantage brought by the market-oriented and law-based reforms of China’s capital market, which provides long-term underpinning for the market’s resilience, Jianghai Securities assesses. The new "Nine Articles" on capital markets, released in 2024, explicitly links listed companies’ dividend practices to financing review eligibility and major shareholders’ share reduction rules, imposing restrictions on share reductions and risk warnings for companies with years of no or low dividend payouts, upgrading shareholder return guidance from a soft recommendation to a hard constraint. In December 2025, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) released the draft Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Listed Companies for public comment, which for the first time includes a dedicated chapter on investor protection at the administrative regulation level. It further improves the institutional mechanisms for cash dividends and share buybacks, building a long-term system for shareholder returns from the top-level design, and driving a systematic restructuring of the A-share market ecosystem from a "financing-first, investment-second" model to one that prioritizes both financing and investment, with shareholder returns at its core.
For global long-term investors, the normalization of dividends and buybacks has provided a critical long-term pricing anchor for Chinese assets, with their allocation value becoming increasingly prominent amid the global low-growth, low-yield environment of asset scarcity, Jianghai Securities points out. Data shows that from 2021 to 2024, the total dividend payout of A-share companies recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 12%, far exceeding the average growth rate of around 5% in major global markets. This trend of synchronized growth in dividends per share and corporate development makes A-share high-dividend assets not only a defensive ballast in global investment portfolios, but also an income-generating vehicle to share China’s high-quality economic growth.
Market data validates the recognition from global capital: foreign holdings of A-shares grew for three consecutive quarters in 2025, with both overseas active and passive funds turning to net inflows for the full year. This has been accompanied by a surge in high-frequency research and intensive position building by foreign institutional firms. Global investment banks including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have recently raised their China economic growth forecasts, with mainstream foreign institutions widely maintaining an overweight rating on Chinese equities.
In the short term, dividends and buybacks have injected tangible liquidity into the market and stabilized investor expectations. In the long run, they reflect the systematic improvement in the profitability, governance standards, and shareholder return awareness of China’s listed companies, Jianghai Securities concludes. With the continuous deepening of market-oriented reforms and the steady advancement of institutional opening-up, a resilient, promising, and return-focused China’s capital market will continue to provide more stable allocation opportunities for global long-term investors, and will further solidify its core position in global asset portfolios.
Contact Info:
Name: Junwei Liang
Email: Send Email
Organization: Jianghai Securities Co., Ltd.
Website: https://www.jhzq.com.cn
Release ID: 89188239
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