Much of China’s development is still
guided by policy directives…
􀀗 …which makes it possible to analyse
regional plans to see which industries
may benefit from official support
􀀗 From there we construct two stock
screens (big cap and small cap) that fit
this regional theme
From a national strategy perspective, China’s regional plans
are anything but random. Policymakers set specific targets for
different places, to make each play a unique economic role.
In other words, each region has its own mandate.
So far, 12 development zones have been set out across the
country. This report analyses these regions, their
development objectives and how this will affect the sectors
and stocks within each region.
Table 1 (page 2) summarises the regional development plans
with a focus on each region’s preferred sectors, as well as
economic growth and market-related statistics. The map of
China on page 3 shows the location of the regions, as well as
their total A- and H-share market caps. And on pages 4-6 we
analyse the drivers of economic growth for the regions
during 2007-8.
Given the huge geographic coverage of the 12 regions,
picking those stocks which should benefit most from the
regional development theme is not easy. We start with a
universe of more than 1,000 stocks from these regions. Our
framework then identifies the most favourable sectors within
each region, which we use to further cut down the list of
eligible stocks.
Our sector selection considerations are natural endowments,
short-term EPS growth, long-term growth potential and
profitability (pages 8-14). For each sector within the 12
regions, we analyse and flag those that stand on these four
metrics (page 15).
Based on the preferred sector selection, we narrow down the
1000+ stocks to two groups – 40 big caps and 40 small caps –
with relatively high growth and good quality (pages 17-18).