Last week the Shanghai Composite index dropped by 12 per cent, bringing the fall since its June peak to almost 30 per cent. The decline — which was not prompted by any major news — was accompanied by a rush of volatility, yet both were largely overshadowed by European developments. But is it time to pay more attention?
The doubling in China’s equity market since June 2014 has been not so much a market phenomenon as the Communist party’s party. Facing a protracted economic slowdown, rising debt and credit misallocation, the government has sought to give the economy an asset price boost, partly to encourage indebted state owned enterprises (SOEs) to trade expensive loans for equity financing. This equity boom has been fuelled by leverage, in the form of an explosion in margin debt, where investors borrow to finance a set proportion of equity purchases. Margin debt outstanding has grown sevenfold since the start of 2014 and June to stand at Rmb1,400bn ($226m).
The government has been active on many fronts. The Shanghai-Hong Kong Connect scheme launched in November facilitated flows into Chinese shares. Beijing has doubled the size of local government bank loans that can be swapped for debt to assuage fears about local government debt. The People’s Bank of China has cut interest rates four times since the end of last year, lowered reserve requirements regularly and used a new tool called Pledged Supplementary Lending to give banks cheap funding against the collateral of local government bonds. Its balance sheet has continued to expand through lending to domestic banks. As elsewhere, this has had markets salivating.