South China Morning Post (February 7)
“China’s state security ministry has stepped forward to warn those who disseminate ‘short’ views on the country’s economic and market prospects.” Based on this year’s performance, “excessive information manipulation has backfired and frightened away investors” from Chinese stocks on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges. “To investors, a one-sided story, no matter how good it may look on the surface, is not trustworthy if there’s no counter-balance…. The rational response would be to stay away.”
Tags: ‘Short’ views, Backfired, China, Counter-balance, Frightened, Hong Kong, Information, Investors, Manipulation, Performance, Prospects, Security ministry, Shanghai, Stocks, Trustworthy, Warn
Bloomberg (January 19)
“Chinese stocks just capped another dismal week…. Grim milestones have kept piling up in recent days: Tokyo has overtaken Shanghai as Asia’s biggest equity market, while India’s valuation premium over China has hit a record. Locally, a meltdown in Chinese shares is wreaking havoc on the nation’s asset management industry, pushing mutual fund closures to a five-year high.”
Tags: Asset management, China, Closures, Dismal, Equity market, Grim, Havoc, India, Meltdown, Milestones, Mutual fund, Premium, Record, Shanghai, Shares, Stocks, Tokyo, Valuation
The Economist (July 2)
“The pecking order of financial centres is changing.” Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore are all vying as “the map of Asian financial hubs is being redrawn.” Given that, “the region’s two emerging giants, China and India, have partial capital controls,” Singapore stands to “be the main beneficiary—provided it can handle some of the downsides of being a global centre for other people’s business.”
Tags: Asia, Beneficiary, Capital controls, China, Downsides, Financial hubs, Hong Kong, India, Pecking order, Redrawn, Shanghai, Singapore
BBC (June 1)
“It was supposed to last just nine days – a staggered lockdown to lessen the impact on Shanghai’s economy…. It lasted 65 days. It crippled the city and scarred its people. Restrictions are now being eased as quickly as they were imposed.” Like a “big bang,” most of the pervasive measures “are simply being lifted.”
Tags: 65 days, 9 days, Crippled, Eased, Economy, Impact, Imposed, Lockdown, People, Restrictions, Scarred, Shanghai, Staggered
The Guardian (May 10)
“Tensions between Shanghai residents and China’s Covid enforcers are on the rise again, amid a new push to end infections outside quarantine zones to meet President Xi Jinping’s demand for achieving “dynamic zero-Covid.” To express their displeasure with what are increasingly being viewed as violations of human rights and the rule of law, residents are sharing incriminating videos on social media. “Censors have been taking down many of these videos, but determined residents have continued to post them.”
Tags: China, Covid, Displeasure, Enforcers, Human rights, Infections, Quarantine, Residents, Rule of law, Shanghai, Social media, Tensions, Videos, Violations, Xi
Wall Street Journal (April 14)
“Events in Hong Kong and Shanghai have demonstrated that a ‘zero Covid’ strategy can look very effective for a long time—until suddenly it isn’t, either because a more infectious variant changes the game or because success itself breeds overconfidence.” Unless the Chinese government moves “quickly to vaccinate and boost its elderly, and start spending much more heavily on hospital capacity, then the human and economic consequences could be disastrous.”
Tags: Boost, China, Consequences, Disastrous, Elderly, Events, Government, Hong Kong, Hospital capacity, Infectious, Overconfidence, Shanghai, Vaccinate, Variant, Zero COVID
Bloomberg (May 31)
“A gauge tracking Shanghai shares has taken quite a beating in the past six days, closing Wednesday at its lowest level since October 2016. While the bearish sentiment hardly bodes well for China’s big debut, it does mean foreigners are getting in at the cheapest valuations in more than two years.”
Tags: Bearish, Beating, Cheapest, China, Foreigners, Sentiment, Shanghai, Shares, Valuations
Financial Times (May 20)
“Today, Hong Kong’s future as a global financial centre looks uncertain as the rival Shanghai Stock Exchange grows in size and credibility…. On the face of it, conditions at the HKEX look fine.” Revenues, profits and new listings were all up in 2017. “Yet Hong Kong was only third when it came to money raised in IPOs. Shanghai and New York were ahead by value, while Shanghai and Shenzhen surpassed the number of Hong Kong listings.”
Tags: HKEX, Hong Kong, IPOs, Listings, New York, Profits, Revenues, Rival, Shanghai, Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shenzhen
The Week (January 6)
“For the Chinese stock markets, it was not a happy New Year.” The initial drops in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Composites were “an unwelcome reminder of two precipitous crashes that befell China’s stock market midway through 2015.” Things have leveled off and it’s true that “the performance of any country’s stock market has only a tangential relationship to the performance of its real economy.”Nevertheless, “the situation for China’s real economy isn’t exactly good.”
Tags: 2016, China, Real economy, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Stock markets
Financial Times (June 25)
“For thrill and spills, you cannot beat Chinese share markets. Recent wild price swings on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses—and the fortunes being made, or lost, by individual retail investors—have made for gripping tales. They have raised fears of a highly-inflated equity bubble about to burst spectacularly. But how much should the rest of the world worry?” This shouldn’t simply be shrugged off “as a local story without wider significance for global financial markets.” The volatility should reinforce concerns that China is “in a bumpy economic transition phase that threatens significant ripple effects in distant parts of the world.”
Tags: Economic transition, Equity bubble, Financial markets, Markets, Price Swings, Retail investors, Shanghai, Shares, Shenzhen
