With China now the largest economy in the world (on a PPP measure1) and the primary engine of global growth, investors need to think hard about how to gain exposure within global portfolios. The impact of Chinese policy decisions reverberate around the world, whether those are purely domestic or international in scope.
A key challenge is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is relatively opaque, and new policy can be difficult to anticipate. Power is more centralised today than it has been in several years; the Party has removed the two-term limit for sitting presidents and has also enshrined Xi Jinping’s name and ideology into the country’s constitution, making him the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.