Foreign institutions raise growth expectations amid China's economic recovery

BEIJING, July 6 -- As China maintains its steady economic growth momentum, foreign-invested institutions have increasingly raised growth expectations for the country's economy, with Chinese assets attracting growing attention.

Multiple institutes, including Barclays and Goldman Sachs, have raised their forecast for China's GDP growth rate in 2024 to 5 percent from the previous 4.4 percent and 4.8 percent respectively, and Fitch adjusted its estimates from 4.5 percent to 4.8 percent.

The World Bank also recently revised its forecast for China's economic growth, predicting a GDP growth rate of 4.8 percent in 2024, an increase of 0.3 percentage points from its December 2023 forecast.

The macroeconomic fundamentals of the Chinese economy remain sound with signs including falling unemployment, rising per capita disposable income and booming strategic emerging industries in multiple provinces nationwide, and the factors provide a solid foundation for steady recovery, a report from the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) stated.

The AMRO's estimation of China's 2024 GDP growth came in at 5.3 percent, according to this report.

Industry insiders believe that the collective upward revision of China's economic growth forecasts by international institutions reflects strong confidence in China's economic prospects and trust in the resilience and potential of the country's economy.

Hu Yifan, chief investment officer and macroeconomic director of Asia Pacific at UBS Wealth Management, said that UBS projected China's consumption for the whole year to register a 6-percent growth.

"Service sector consumption is expected to show resilience first, particularly in industries such as travel, transportation, hotels, restaurants and box offices, which have shown relatively evident growth surpassing 2019 levels," Hu said.

In the context of macroeconomic stabilization and recovery, foreign institutions have also shown interest in Chinese assets at low valuations.

"Since the end of October 2023, J.P. Morgan has been fully bullish on Chinese equities," said Wendy Liu, chief Asia and China equity strategist at J.P. Morgan, noting that China has shown significant economic recovery, which is conducive to the performance of A-shares and Hong Kong stocks, further supporting stock valuations.

Valuations in consumer sectors such as catering and social services are at historically low levels, and low valuations are a good way to weather the current global uncertainty, according to Japanese financial services group Nomura.

With the continuous deepening of comprehensive reforms in China's capital market and institutional opening up, global capital investment in the Chinese market has also become easier.

Earlier in April, China's State Council released a guideline on strengthening regulation, forestalling risks and promoting the high-quality development of the capital market, calling for efforts to optimize the cross-border interconnection mechanism of the capital market and broadening the financing channels for overseas listing of enterprises while enhancing international securities cooperation.

In the meantime, China will simplify and improve fund management for the dollar-denominated Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor scheme (QFII) and its yuan-denominated sibling, RQFII, Zhu Hexin, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said earlier at the Lujiazui Forum held in Shanghai.

"We are revising relevant fund management regulations," said Zhu, who is also the head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, calling for efforts to facilitate foreign investors' participation in domestic securities investment and promote financial market connectivity.

The QFII and RQFII programs are designed to allow overseas investors to invest in China's domestic capital markets.

Since 2020, more than 300 qualified foreign institutional investors have completed foreign exchange registration.

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