When hundreds of private equity executives met in Washington last week to discuss emerging markets, China dominated the debate. This outcome at the International Finance Corporation and Emerging Markets Private Equity Association conference is hardly surprising, given how important China is for the health of the world economy and for the price of everything from coal to copper to credit.
Analysts have downgraded China’s growth prospects once more, making it clear that its slowdown is more than a cyclical phenomenon. Growth of 8 per cent used to be the floor and has instead become the ceiling, as Ruchir Sharma, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, puts it. Slowing growth is not necessarily a bad thing, if the quality improves. Maybe in time, it will. But not today. The rebalancing is still more aspiration than reality.
All this is likely to have an adverse impact on China’s big banks, including Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.