The first sign that Chinese authorities were making it harder for Stephanie Peng to buy overseas shares was a pop-up message on her phone, blocking access to her securities account at Citic Bank International unless she provided personal identification documents.
“I called my account manager for two days and couldn’t get hold of him,” said Peng, a 38-year-old clerk in Shanghai. “It caught me off guard. I don’t recall needing this kind of verification before just to trade.”
The curbs that surprised Peng were part of a broader crackdown in recent weeks by authorities in Beijing keen to limit Chinese citizens’ exposure to US equity markets. It came within days of Elon Musk’s SpaceX unveiling details of an initial public offering expected to ignite huge interest in US tech stocks. Anthropic this week also filed paperwork for an IPO.