Video Transcript
The zero-COVID policy has finally come to an end after three years of exhausting implementation of it.
There is a shift from the government's attitude on the COVID policy front, where we think they are now seeing delivering growth and prosperity is as important as protecting lives.
With the end of the COVID-zero policy, and both domestic and international traveling now fully enabled, China economy is going to gradually return to its full growth potential when things continue to normalize. 2023, however, is set to be a challenging year on the global front as global growth is slowing, inflation to remain high, and war in Europe is prolonged. China and Asian exports have already been trending down in recent quarters, so export growth will be less of a contributor the China economy this year. However, the strong expected rebound on consumption pent-up demand could nevertheless act as an effective tailwind for China to deliver above-average growth this year.
On the direction of the Chinese interest rate this year, we do not expect to see it rising too much in 2023 unless consumer spending comes to a strong halt or unexpectedly high food prices, which would make inflation a real threat. We see value in having some exposure to the Chinese government bond market because of the resilience of the underlying economy, but we do not believe it warrants a sizable overweight positioning, especially as bond supplies will be aplenty given the high fiscal deficit the government has likely budgeted.
Technicals of investing in China debt are also likely to weaken as the border reopening of China has inspired local investors reallocating assets from fixed income to stocks.
Geopolitical risk has raised investability issues for some of the Chinese debts, especially the SOE ones. There have been Chinese companies deemed to have close connections to the military that have suddenly been put on the U.S. sanction list. You cannot research this kind of risk, and it is hard to anticipate, so for us this is one of the biggest tail risks of investing in the China debt market due to the changing geopolitical environment.
Disclosure
January 2023
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