Wang Xiangwei

Opinion | To boost investor enthusiasm for China, start with Hong Kong tycoons

When it comes to China, many international investors take their cue from Hong Kong’s business leaders – like they did 45 years ago

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Wang Xiangwei

Published: 5:30am, 1 Jul 2024

China’s top leaders are set to hold a long-delayed pivotal meeting soon, and are expected to discuss a new growth model and offer a clearer path for the world’s second-largest economy. But clarity is very hard to detect even with the meeting, widely called a plenum, just a few weeks away.

Optimists and pessimists are talking past one another as to what can be expected of the enclave, which could have far-reaching repercussions for the rest of the world. State media have played up China’s determination to pursue “high-quality development” and “high-level opening up”, President Xi Jinping’s favourite catchphrases, trying to build up expectations of major policy moves at the plenum, set to be held from July 15-18.

In a recent visit to Australia, Premier Li Qiang told local businessmen that China was planning major measures to further comprehensively deepen reforms and steadily expand institutional opening-up, and that China’s investment environment will get better.

But investors and entrepreneurs at home and abroad who have heard those high-sounding slogans too many times over the past four years, but have seen too little action to promote the private sector and market forces, have remained downright pessimistic.

A case in point is how China’s leading financial regulators, speaking at the recent Lujiazui Forum, one of the country’s most influential international platforms, tried hard to paint a rosy picture of China’s further reform and opening up, but left investors unimpressed. The mainland and Hong Kong stock markets fell after the forum.

Indeed, how to restore investors’ confidence and get the international investment community to once again accept China’s continued economic rise should become a top priority for China’s leaders at the coming plenum and beyond.