It’s always darkest right before it goes completely back.
It’s been a rough year for the Chinese market and it’s finishing on a bad note. Have a look at the FXI China ETF today. It’s down 5% and at the lowest since November 2022.
Stock markets everywhere have been rallying for the past seven weeks but hopes for some kind of large-scale stimulus in China continue to be dashed and today the PBOC left the loan-prime rate unchanged despite negative y/y inflation. Combine that with the terrible US-China summit in October and it’s all gone bad.
What might have caused the latest leg down is a report that Chinese President Xi Jinping bluntly told President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that Beijing will reunify Taiwan, one way or another. The report said he hasn’t yet told Biden the timing but the comment alone suggests that it might be sooner rather than later.