Foreign investors sold record amounts of Chinese shares in August, as Beijing’s piecemeal measures to support the economy failed to ease concerns about the slowing growth and the worsening property crisis.
The unprecedented outflows coincide with figures released on Thursday showing that China’s manufacturing sector contracted in July for a fifth straight month. This is despite leaders having promised to provide more substantial support for the crucial property sector which accounts for around a quarter of economic activity.
The escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing have also lowered western investors’ appetites for Chinese assets. US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned during a recent four-day trip to China that American companies are starting to view China as an “uninvestable”.
Based on data from the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, calculations show that offshore traders sold shares worth almost Rmb90bn (12.4bn USD) in August. This is more than in any other month since the program was launched late 2014.
Analysts and asset managers said that the increase in sales was due to investors’ disappointment. Their focus this year has shifted from a general stimulus package to a bailout of property developers. Chinese leaders are still reluctant to take such action.
Stephen Innes is the managing partner of SPI Asset Management. He said that investors are concerned about GDP, and whether policymakers can hit their 5-percent growth target. The property market is directly responsible for this, as the GDP could suffer a 1 percentage-point or higher hit.
Innes said that investors are also concerned about “high-level politics risk” because the outlook for US China relations remains dim, despite Raimondo’s “positive” visit. This month, concerns about the future of the real estate market in China have grown as the private Chinese developer Country Garden – once considered one of the least likely to default – missed payments on bonds issued abroad and tried to delay repayments due on the renminbi next week.
In Hong Kong, shares of China Evergrande (the developer whose default on dollar bonds two year ago started the liquidity crisis in the sector) resumed trading this week for first time in seventeen months. They immediately dropped almost 90%.
“The word stimulus’ was misused too often and now no one expects a huge bang on fiscal front,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero. Chief Asia-Pacific Economist at Natixis. Investors’ clients now focus on real estate policy — this is the new mantra.
She noted that there have been several changes to the property policies in the last month, such as the ease of mortgage requirements for first-time home buyers in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. These were “tiny pieces, not the big boom [that would have caused] equity inflows by foreign investors”.
The economic slowdown is weighing heavily on the broader valuations for Chinese shares. This has caused the benchmark CSI 300 to fall by 8 per cent, in dollar terms, in the past year. Meanwhile, other markets have seen double-digit gains.
Investor sentiment has also been weakened by efforts to boost shares via trading fee cuts and other measures that, when implemented in the past, had delivered significant gains.
Garcia-Herrero said that “substantial stimulus is needed to bring people back into the market” before adding, “Don’t wait too long.”