Foreign financiers look past the trade war and ramp up in China

AS CHINA WAS preparing to join the World Trade Organisation in 2001, the phrase “the wolves are coming” kept cropping up in state media. The country was about to open up to foreign banks and the fear was that Wall Street’s finest would devour their Chinese rivals. But regulators managed to defang the wolves, never giving them a chance. Today, foreign firms account for less than 2% of assets in China’s banking sector.

It is instructive to keep this in mind as China again talks of opening its financial system. On July 2nd the prime minister, Li Keqiang, said that foreign investors would be allowed to take full ownership of investment banks and insurers in China from 2020, a year earlier than previously promised. Over the past two decades they have been limited to minority shares, and only last year were they permitted 51% stakes.