There was champagne on offer at 9am in Hong Kong last week for the big launch of the Bond Connect trading scheme with the mainland — but I’m waiting for a bottle of wine I’m owed by a colleague.
The wine is the outcome of a bet I wrote about in December that China would not announce a single sweeping devaluation of the renminbi in the first half of this year. Back then, speculation about a move — of say, 10 per cent or more — swirled around the markets as the currency slid towards Rmb7 to the dollar at a surprisingly fast pace.
Yet over the past month, the renminbi has been noticeable only by its absence from discussions about China, even as the country managed two big markets milestones. In that time, Chinese stocks have won their first-ever inclusion in an international benchmark index and Hong Kong launched Bond Connect, linking foreign investors sitting offshore directly to the mainland’s vast debt markets — also a first.