China A-Shares Strategy │ Recent market update
- The period of consolidation for China’s equity markets continues. Since their year-to-date peak in the second week of July, they have traded sideways in a narrow band.
- Similar to the pattern we saw through the earlier part of this year, it is notable how China equities have been less volatile on a day-to-day basis than many other global markets. As at 3 September, the China A-market has recorded only three days of +/-5% movements compared to 10 days for the S&P 500.1
- The main source of the recent US volatility, the tech sector, continues to be the broad theme in US-China tensions. China’s internet technology companies challenge the conventional orthodoxy that “America does innovation and China does clones”. For while capital-intensive industries in China such as semiconductors will receive significant government support in coming years, some consumer apps, built with the same tools available to everyone with an Apple Developer account, and distributed on app stores around the world. Their success is due to the backing of an entrepreneurial business, not industrial policy.
- On a similar theme, one of China’s biggest insurers held its annual investor day on 22 September during which presented some eye-catching statistics on its healthcare business. The company is building the world’s largest healthcare databank, which so far includes billions of online consultation enquiries from patients as well as information covering a large number of diseases and drugs.
- If data is the new raw material driving companies in the future in the same way that oil did previously, then China has a significant competitive advantage.
- In the next five years almost half the world’s data is estimated to be in Asia, the majority in China, as a result of the region’s rapid adoption of new technologies. And this goes someway to explaining why China has been investing so heavily in artificial intelligence.
- While much of the funding for China’s burgeoning innovation has previously come in private markets, the public market universe is now expanding rapidly.
- Increasingly, therefore, it appears that the traditional definitions of Western and Eastern capitalism are becoming blurred, with Chinese companies innovating fast and well beyond just the state-funded industries.
- This blurring of definitions will become more apparent in coming weeks as China’s next five-year plan is disclosed. First launched in 1953, these plans initially charted the course for rapid industrialisation of the then-agrarian country. Now China’s leaders are drafting the 14th plan, which has come to represent more of a large neon sign of where China’s leaders want to take the country.
- With President Xi Jinping’s pledge at the United Nations General Assembly for carbon neutrality by the year 2060, environmental areas such as wind, solar, electric vehicle and battery storage technology deployment will likely be heavily featured. Other areas to watch for will be “new infrastructure”, as more capital is directed to China’s new engines of growth.
Unless otherwise stated, all details are sourced from Allianz Global Investors as of 25 September 2020.
1 Source: Refinitiv DataStream, Allianz Global Investors, as of 3 September 2020.
Active is: Inventing new opportunities
China reaches for the STAR market
Summary
China’s nascent STAR market provides a platform for the technology and science firms that increasingly underpin the country’s growth story.
Key takeaways
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