Global investors should take a fresh look at China, where rapid technological advancement is converging with declining geopolitical risk relative to other regions, senior investment executives said at the Milken Institute’s Global Investors’ Symposium on Monday.
The event in Hong Kong brought together 500 business leaders and senior executives from the investment, banking, finance, technology and consumer sectors under the theme “Capital in a Changing World”.
“I think we should seriously think about China, because of its stability [in this geopolitical turmoil], and I do see ‘animal spirits’ coming back,” said Hoi Tung, CEO and chairman of Ping An Overseas Holdings, the offshore investment arm of Ping An Insurance, China’s largest insurer by market capitalisation.
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Tung said the firm was reassessing the level of US exposure in its US$60 billion portfolio, citing the Iran conflict as evidence that the US was “becoming less reliable” and “not really rules-based”, and adding that China could offer investment opportunities amid the volatility.
Aaron Costello, head of Asia at Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm, said he had seen a clear revival in investor interest in China’s technological advances after a prolonged lull following Covid-19.
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“Last year on this stage, we were talking about how unloved China [was] and the scepticism that foreign investors had towards it,” Costello said.
Now, more clients were discussing whether to visit China to assess opportunities on the ground, he said, adding that sentiment had begun to thaw particularly among European investors while their US counterparts warmed more gradually.
