StanChart bullish on China's growth outlook

Jerry Zhang, China cluster CEO(China and Japan) at Standard Chartered, said that the latest version of a regularly released development index on small and mid-sized enterprises by the bank bounced to a 10-month high of 51.6 in March, as activity gained momentum after the holidays. The subindices for key performance and expectations of SMEs rebounded sharply in March, while their access to bank credit became easier.

"This year we believe will be a year of strengthening recovery (for the Chinese economy). There will be challenges, but also many opportunities. We have good reasons to be optimistic," Zhang said.

Winters said Standard Chartered will increasingly focus on new economy sectors to further tap potential in China. The executive also said that the lender is benefiting from China's continued opening-up.

"Everything we've seen is very supportive to the opening-up agenda, but in a thoughtful and careful way," he said, adding the bank is able to "work extremely well with both the Chinese government and Chinese clients as the opening-up agenda is pursued".

Over the years, Standard Chartered has well positioned itself for China's opening-up, including making substantial investments in cross-border payments, Winters said.

Its fully developed interest rate and currency risk management and trading team in China can facilitate clients' cross-border payments and cross-border investment flows, and it also has a strong presence in China's important trading partners.

"Our role is to help facilitate the flow of goods and capital back and forth between China and other markets," he said.

Speaking about foreign investor sentiment in China, he said: "Some foreign companies in other industries have had fantastic success in China and we see substantial ongoing interest in investing in China, both to tap into the very strong technical capabilities here, the highly educated labor force and the Chinese consumers."

Meanwhile, it is a fact that factors including disruptions to supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic have caused some investors to pursue diversification in supply chains. Yet such diversification doesn't mean leaving China, he said, adding some companies leave because the Chinese market is an extremely competitive one.