Next China: Stock Market Meltdown

Hello, this is Charlotte Yang in Hong Kong with a special edition of the Next China newsletter. You may be receiving this because you subscribe to one of our other newsletters, including Economics Daily, Five Things: Asia and Balance of Power. If you’d like to keep reading Next China, sign up here.

Stocks have become the topic to avoid at dinner tables in China these days.

The new year has seen anxiety over China’s slowing economy flare spectacularly in its giant stock market, with Shanghai dethroned as Asia’s biggest equity market and Hong Kong, where I’m based, briefly overtaken by India as the world’s fourth-biggest bourse.

In all, three straight years of losses have wiped more than $6 trillion from the market value of Chinese and Hong Kong equities since a peak reached in 2021.