China’s No. 2 leader, Li Qiang, traveled to Switzerland with a message for the titans of the business world gathered for the World Economic Forum.
“Choosing the Chinese market is not a risk, but an opportunity,” Mr. Li, China’s premier, told an audience in Davos on Tuesday.
But there’s a different sentiment about China playing out in the stock market, and it’s not so optimistic. The worries over China’s economy have been visible for months in Hong Kong, where stocks plunged 14 percent last year, the fourth consecutive annual decline.
The new year hasn’t offered any relief, either, and economic data released by China on Wednesday prompted another sell-off.
In Hong Kong, where many of China’s biggest companies trade, stocks fell 3.7 percent on Wednesday. So far this year, the market has lost one-tenth of its value. In China’s financial capital of Shanghai, stocks dropped 2.1 percent, extending this year’s decline to…
