Pandemic stimulus helped trigger speculative frenzies in everything from stocks to crypto and property across the world in 2021. China went the other way as Beijing officials acted to deflate bubbles.

The result is one of the most extreme divergences between major financial markets in recent history. This year’s sell-off in the MSCI China Index of stocks means the gauge lags global peers by 37 percentage points, the biggest gap since 1998. Chinese junk dollar bonds trail global high-yield returns by about 25 percentage points, the most in more than a decade. While home prices are surging in places like Manhattan, the UK and Australia, they have fallen in China for the past four months.

Bloomberg