(Bloomberg) — Gains in Chinese stocks have typically filtered through to bolster their emerging-market counterparts — not this time.

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Mainland equities have surged over the past six months, breaking free of a multi-year slump, while broader developing-nation equities have largely flat-lined. The divergence is being put down to the fact Chinese gains are being driven by a tech frenzy, rather than an improving economy that would filter through to other economies via the nation’s extensive trade links.

China’s outperformance is “driven by a specific tech-driven boost to spending more towards the consumer away from investment, and it’s very unlikely to have large spillover impact to the rest of EM,” said Manik Narain, head of emerging-market strategy research at UBS Group AG (UBS) in London. “This is not the classical Chinese playbook of 2009, 2016, 2020 that ultimately morphed into deported EM recoveries.”

The MSCI China Index (2801.HK) has jumped more than 30% since the end of August, while a gauge of equities in emerging markets excluding the nation has dropped almost 7%. That’s a stark contrast with at least two historical periods when gains were in tandem: Chinese shares rose 63% in 2009-2010 and a broad gauge of emerging-market shares climbed 103%, while China stocks advanced 50% in 2016-17 and the EM-wide gauge rallied 46%.

Chinese stocks initially jumped last September due to optimism over additional economic stimulus but those gains were largely unwound as policy announcements proved underwhelming. It was only the release of a new artificial-intelligence model from DeepSeek in January that finally set off a more enduring rally.

The current divergence between Chinese shares and their emerging-market peers can be seen in investing flows too. The KraneShares CSI China Internet Fund, one of the largest exchange-traded funds tracking China, has seen an inflow of $1.5 billion this year, while the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) ex China ETF was set for one of its few monthly outflows since 2022.

The revival of investor optimism toward Chinese shares is due to broader reasons than just the tech industry and the nation’s equities may continue to generate better returns than other emerging markets, according to Vincenzo Vedda, chief investment officer at DWS International in Frankfurt.