By Suzanne McGee
(Reuters) -Asset management giant Vanguard Group plans to launch a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) that will target emerging markets while excluding China, joining a growing niche shaped by investor debate over China’s role in global portfolios.
The Vanguard Emerging Markets ex-China ETF will make its debut later this summer. Many investors have been unsettled by turmoil surrounding China’s trade relationship with the United States, even as better performance from Chinese stocks means some are reluctant to remove them from funds altogether.
The Vanguard offering would bring to 13 the number of emerging markets ETFs that exclude Chinese stocks, according to Morningstar data. Two-thirds of those have been launched since 2023, a year that saw China’s CSI300 index record its third straight year of losses.
The growing interest in rolling out these ex-China funds is logical, said Bryan Armour, ETF strategist at Morningstar.
“Investors may be worried about geopolitical risk, state intervention in private markets, or just want to manage their China allocation separately from broader emerging markets,” he said.
Even so, in the last month or two, flows into most broad emerging markets have begun to look stronger than those into ex-China alternatives, he said.
Sammy Suzuki, head of emerging markets equities at AllianceBernstein, said he believes that interest in ex-China emerging markets funds is dwindling as Chinese stocks stage a recovery.
In the last 12 months, the iShares China Large-Cap ETF has gained 35.34%, and the returns on Chinese stocks contributed to the 9.7% gain by the broad iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ex-China ETF is up only 4.8%.
“China is both too large and too controversial to not be its own allocation,” said Jason Hsu, chief investment officer of Rayliant Global Advisors, adding both dedicated China ETFs and emerging markets ex-China products will coexist.
Vanguard, which has $10.1 trillion in total assets, submitted the new filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday. It already offers investors the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF, which has about $85.9 billion in assets, with 30% invested in Chinese stocks, according to estimates from Jeff DeMaso, editor of the Independent Vanguard Adviser, who analyzes the firm’s fund offerings.
DeMaso said that investors who buy the new ETF when it launches will swap an outsize position in China for hefty exposure to companies in Taiwan and India, which account for nearly 60% of the underlying index.
A spokesman for Vanguard said the new ETF will offer additional choice for investors who want to avoid Chinese stocks with a fee of only 0.07%, compared to 0.25% for BlackRock’s offering.
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee; Editing by Alden Bentley and Nia Williams)
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