By Elsa Ohlen

Chinese stocks fell Monday as the Hang Seng Tech index slid into correction territory amid heightened market uncertainty prompted by the Trump administration's tariff policy.

The Hang Seng Tech index tracks some of mainland China's largest technology firms listed in Hong Kong such as search engine provider Baidu, e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com, and game developer Tencent. The index closed down 2% Monday and has thereby dropped 11% since its recent peak on March 18.

The broader Hang Seng Index fell 1.3% Monday.

U.S.-listed shares of Alibaba -- a Barron's stock pick for 2025 -- and JD.com fell 2.3% and 1.3%, respectively in Monday premarket trading. Baidu stock dropped 2.4% ahead of the open.

The absence of significant news driving Monday's decline suggests investors are taking profits following a strong first quarter for Chinese tech. While the Hang Seng Tech index has dropped 11% over the past two weeks, it's still up 21% since the start of the year. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq 100 is down 8% in 2025.

President Donald Trump's tariff policy has also weighed on market sentiment lately. Fresh U.S. levies on imports are set to come into force this week.

A big driver of gains for Chinese tech stocks this year has been the DeepSeek artificial intelligence model that was developed in the country, allegedly at a fraction of the cost of leading Western models. That challenged the idea of U.S. AI dominance and Baidu has since announced it is working on an AI chatbot of its own, which boosted shares further.

Write to Elsa Ohlen at elsa.ohlen@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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March 31, 2025 08:20 ET (12:20 GMT)

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