Key insights
- While other Asian markets like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea have seen significant gains driven by AI and semiconductors, Hong Kong's Hang Seng remains far below its historical peaks. This underperformance is attributed to China's property crisis and regulatory crackdowns on major tech firms, leading to investor uncertainty about the predictability of economic rules. The article suggests this situation could serve as a cautionary tale for India's market development.
Japan’s Nikkei recently crossed 60,000. Taiwan’s market surged with the AI and semiconductor boom. Korea’s KOSPI is near record highs too.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is still sitting far below its peak from years ago.
And this wasn’t supposed to happen.
For a long time, China looked unstoppable economically. But then the property crisis hit. Evergrande alone had liabilities of more than $300 billion. At the same time, companies like Alibaba and Tencent faced heavy regulatory crackdowns that wiped out massive market value.
Over time, the problem stopped being just slower growth. Investors started worrying about predictability itself.
Markets can handle recessions, inflation, even wars sometimes. What they struggle with is uncertainty around the rules of the game.
That’s probably why money kept flowing into Japan, Taiwan, and Korea despite global volatility.
I think India should pay attention to that very carefully. Are we building the next japan or slowly becoming the next Hang Seng?