"Given the endless bad news about China’s economy, the contrarian in me wants to be bullish.
It’s true that debt, housing, local government and consumer demand are all a mess, and dire demographics raise the prospect of a Japanese-style economic disaster. But there are three things working in China’s favor as an investment destination: Stocks rarely have been this cheap compared with the U.S.; its entire weight in a global benchmark is smaller than Apple’s; and a weaker dollar might help.
The basic case is that China is cheap. MSCI China, which includes Hong Kong stocks, trades at just 10.8 times the next 12 months’ earnings, about half the 20 times earnings of both the S&P 500 and MSCI USA. Even that hides the cheapness of much of the market, as Tencent Holdings makes up more than 12% of the index, and trades at 17.5 times forward earnings."