#7 Beyond Shein and Temu: How to invest in China without China risk?

Highlights

1. Global capital is skeptical of China now. But that China's growth story has not ended. There is actually a way to invest in China without investing in China.

2. The world ex-China is experiencing inflation, while China is going through deflation. This setup gives unique opportunities.

3. Chinese entrepreneurs are expanding globally and they would like to know their customers directly and jump over the traders and also the buyers, so that the whole supply chain is more efficient.

4. Shein and Temu are good examples of this big trend, but there are more opportunities.

5. Despite the fact that we are living in the age of decoupling, ironically, Chinese entrepreneurs are fundamentally reshaping infrastructure in the US, in Europe and in emerging markets. And there will be ample investment opportunities there as well.

6. Many "Chinese teams" now start as global players, with development and operations teams in China, while product and marketing teams based abroad, from the very start. It's called a "Glocal" model.

Full script

[00:00:00]Robert Wu: Welcome to China Biz Talk by Baiguan. This is Robert. Among the close to 3000 subscribers of Baiguan, around 40% of you are investors or work in an investment firm. One big investment question about China in the recent years is whether China is still investable. At Baiguan, we always argue that China still is. But we know there are many skeptics out there. For them China is too risky. So is there a way to enjoy China's future growth, without the China risk? Our guest today, Bob Chen, thinks there is such a way.

Bob Chen陈博, is an investor working for Mangrove Capital 沣源资本, a China-based venture capital fund specializing in software and globalization-themed investments.

Bob has a very interesting career path. As one of the few Chinese undergraduates in the class of 2012 at University of Chicago, he studied Economics and Political Science, and first became a macro-economist working for China's top policy think tank. He later quit the public service job and joined the venture capital industry. Over the past years, Bob has developed a speciality in investing in the so-called "Go Global出海" companies. One of his investments, Sailvan Times赛维时代, a large Amazon-based merchant, successfully IPOed unto China A Share market this year.

I have known Bob for more than a decade, and he always strikes me as one of the deepest thinkers I personally know. His interests are also inter-disciplanary, covering venture capital, macro-economics and China domestic markets. In fact, in July we translated an article from his WeChat blog (嬉笑创客) reviewing the recent history of A-share market. So you are already familiar with him.

I am really glad to have Bob joining us today. Hi Bob, can you introduce a little bit about yourself as well? How have you developed into who you are today?

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