Was Deng Xiaoping Right? An Overview of China's Equity Markets†
The research findings cited in this paper were first published in either Privatizing China: Inside China's Stock Markets (Wiley; 2005) or Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise (Wiley; 2012) both by Carl E. Walter and Fraser J.T. Howie.
Mr. Walter is the co-author, with Fraser J.T. Howie, of two books: Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise (Wiley, 2012); and Privatizing China: Inside China's Stock Markets (Wiley, 2005). Mr. Walter's ongoing research focuses on China's banking and fiscal systems, including the debt and capital markets, which he plans to turn into another book.
Fluent in Mandarin, Mr. Walter holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University and a BA in Russian Studies from Princeton. In 1979 he was a member of the first group of graduate students to return to China after the revolution and received a certificate of advanced study from Peking University. In 2013 he was a visiting scholar at the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. After biking with his daughter across the United States, he has settled for the time being in New York, where he acts as an independent consultant.
Abstract
In the western world, stock markets arose from the search by privately owned companies for capital to build their businesses. Over time, the markets became places where ownership interests and even entire companies were bought and sold. In China, the complete opposite has happened. The markets arose out of the need for capital by bankrupt state-owned enterprises operating in an economy with no history of private property. Deng Xiaoping, China's last emperor, gave the green light for the stock market experiment in early 1992 more with the hope of encouraging reform and efficiency than from any conviction that stock markets were the next sure thing.
Now, after more than 20 years of experimentation with domestic and international listings, it appears evident that stock markets whose primary function is to trade minority interests in government-controlled companies have not achieved the goal of improving enterprise performance, as China's leaders originally hoped. Instead, the combination of state monopolies with Wall Street expertise and international capital has led to the creation of national companies that represent little more than the incorporation of China's old Soviet-style industrial ministries. As for the markets, the government's determination to prevent real privatization has produced separate classes of shares that are defined almost entirely by one thing: the shareholder's relationship to the government. And with all aspects of stock market activity regulated, managed, and owned by various state agencies, it is not surprising that non-state investors have become motivated more by speculative opportunities than by investment fundamentals.
But a quarter of a century is a short time in any country's development and, for all their shortcomings, the markets in mainland China and Hong Kong have played a significant role raising capital for China. It may be too early, perhaps, to suggest that China's equity markets have failed to accomplish what they were intended to do.