CKGSB Investor Sentiment Survey Found More Chinese Investors Retreat to Safe Assets

BEIJING, May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- CKGSB Investor Sentiment Survey's Q1 report records 16.3% of net increase in the number of people willing to invest in gold in April 2025, up 17 percentage points since October 2018, indicating a retreat to safe harbors in rocky times among US tariff hikes implemented as this survey went out.

Respondents this quarter expressed notably high concerns about international relations and the impact on their investment decisions. About 63.6% of respondents found Sino-US relations to have a major impact on investment, about 56.8% considered China's relations with Western countries important, and about 58.8% believed that a broken China-US trade relationship will lead to heavy short-term pressure for China.

With their eye on the resilience of the private economy, technological breakthroughs, and government support to the domestic economy, however, investors are found optimistic that China would not suffer too badly from the long-term impact of the trade war. About 45.8% of respondents saw the future in a positive light and as many as 20% thought China would ride out the storm without significant impact.

As real estate, the main source of wealth for the vast majority of Chinese families, has fallen in value ever since August 2020, and with the external geopolitical and trade challenges, China will have to recalibrate its growth with domestic demand. About 58.2% of respondents believed that boosting domestic demand would have a big impact on future investment.

It also found investors' expectations for China's A-shares to be consistent with the trajectory of the stock market itself. After November's net increase in willingness to invest of 11.3% over July 2024, this April saw net future willingness to invest reaching 12.7%.

Investors were confident that China is in a leading position in important scientific and technological fields and that this would result in significant growth. About 54.4% of respondents responded China was a world leader in AI, up 14.7 percentage points from November 2024.

The survey showed that the status of the private economy is crucial to their future investment decisions, with 44.5% of respondents affirming this view in April 2025.

The Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business Investor Sentiment Survey (CKISS) is a survey on China's investor sentiment and expectations in the capital market, produced by Professor Liu Jing, CKGSB Professor of Accounting and Finance.