China has attracted a growing influx of capital from Middle Eastern investors seeking to diversify their US-heavy portfolios in recent months, but Beijing will need to further open up its financial markets to sustain the trend, analysts said.
The department did not break down the figures by country, but analysts noted a growing trend for global investors – including large Gulf sovereign wealth funds – to pivot towards stable, high-growth markets in Asia amid rising global instability.
“It is possible that some funds have been withdrawn from the US market for safe-haven purposes and redirected towards major trading nations and countries with substantial overseas net assets, such as China,” said Sun Lijian, director of Fudan University’s Financial Research Center in Shanghai.
Washington’s support for Israel amid an escalating regional conflict had left Gulf investors reluctant to put “all their eggs in one basket”, according to Sun.
The growing capital inflows into China also reflected the Gulf states’ increasing confidence in China’s opening-up policies and efforts to internationalise the yuan, he noted.
