CHINA'S A-SHARE market - the part of the People's Republic's equity market that until recently only domestic investors could access - is distinctly investor-unfriendly.
It has after all been well headlined that some of China's less scrupulous brokerages have been involved in price ramping, money laundering and other irregularities on the A-share market. Few of the 1,200 companies listed have ever heard of the term corporate governance. In addition the $500 billion market has a P/E ratio of around 40, making it the world's most expensive. It manages, though, to combine this with being one of the world's worst performers.
It would seem a wise plan to keep your money as far away as possible from the A-share market. Yet when the Chinese authorities announced at the end of 2002 that it would be opened to foreigners under a qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) scheme, global investment banks raced to...
