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- China's securities regulator met with major financial institutions, according to the FT.
- Chinese regulators didn't expect the regulatory hard line to spook investors as much as it did, said a person on the call.
- Hong Kong-listed Chinese shares received a boost, but one trader had doubts: "Is there conviction behind this? No, not really."
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China's securities regulator met with top financial institutions including BlackRock, Fidelity, and JPMorgan on Wednesday in an attempt to calm fears that Beijing was cracking down on US-listed Chinese companies, according to a new Financial Times report.
The meeting, led by China Securities Regulatory Commission vice-chair Fang Xinghai, tried to reassure US institutional investors that China was proceeding with business as usual. In particular, Fang told the US attendees that Beijing's hard line on private tutoring businesses was a one-off situation, according to a source within the meeting who spoke with the FT.
Chinese regulators didn't expect their crackdown – which tanked shares in ride-hailer Didi Chuxing before spreading to private tutors and other sectors – to spook investors as much as it did, said the person on the call.
After the call was first reported, Hong Kong-listed Chinese shares enjoyed a much-needed boost, pushing the Hang Seng tech index up 8%.
Yet many of the attendees were not reassured. Commenting on the Hang Seng bounceback, one trader at a Chinese brokerage told the FT: "Is there conviction behind this? No, not really."
One enduring source of worry is the VIE corporate structure. VIEs, short for variable interest entity, is a not-legally-recognized workaround that lets Chinese companies list overseas.
Questions about whether VIEs would be allowed going forward were "not answered definitively," a source told the FT.
"The Chinese government is not completely tone-deaf to international investor sentiment," said one person on the call. "These policies are not coming from the CSRC, they're coming from much higher up. It's clear there will be more to come, that's obvious to everyone," they added.