China A-shares: Strategic allocation to market and factor premiums

The authors investigate the added value of strategically allocating to the Chinese A-shares equity market. Their results indicate a positive contribution to a portfolio that only considers traditional developed and emerging equity markets and bonds. The authors find that a diversified A-shares portfolio based on value, quality, and momentum factors exhibits significantly better risk-adjusted performance than the passive A-shares market portfolio. Consequently, allocating to Chinese A-share factor premiums significantly improves the efficient frontier. The conclusions remain similar when incorporating conservative estimates of trading costs or when constructing value-weighted portfolios, which represent more realistic investor returns.