China remains investible despite skepticism, says veteran financier Fang

Fang Fenglei has spent three decades at the center of China's financial architecture. In the early 1990s, he worked alongside Morgan Stanley to establish the country's first joint venture investment bank, China International Capital Corp. He then moved to Bank of China International, where he orchestrated the Hong Kong listings of state-owned behemoths. Later, he chaired a China partnership with Goldman Sachs. Now leading Hopu Investments, he occupies a rare vantage point: someone who has watched foreign capital flow into and out of China through multiple cycles of optimism and doubt.

The current moment finds him pushing back against a narrative that has gained traction in Western financial circles—that China's economy has matured past its growth phase and that the country no longer merits serious investment attention. Fang's counterargument is direct: the skepticism, he contends, rests on reasoning that does not withstand scrutiny.

His case rests partly on observation. Foreign institutions, he notes, do not all see China the same way. Their views diverge based on sector exposure, appetite for risk, and the political and cultural lenses through which they evaluate opportunity. This fragmentation of sentiment matters because it suggests no single verdict on China's investibility can be universal.

But the more concrete part of his argument centers on how foreign companies have actually structured themselves to operate in China. The joint venture model, he suggests, has proven workable—not perfect, but functional. Starbucks provides one example. Through its arrangement with Boyu Capital, Starbucks holds a 40 percent stake while Boyu controls 60 percent. Critically, Starbucks retained ownership of its brand intellectual property. McDonald's followed a similar path: a consortium led by Citic holds 52 percent of the Chinese operation, while McDonald's owns 48 percent. In both cases, the foreign partner gave up majority control but preserved what mattered most—the brand, the systems, the proprietary knowledge that generates returns.

These structures represent a negotiated settlement between foreign investors seeking stability and Chinese partners seeking ownership and influence. They are not arrangements that would satisfy an investor accustomed to full control. But they have allowed two of the world's largest restaurant chains to maintain profitable operations in one of the world's largest consumer markets. That fact alone, Fang suggests, undermines the claim that China has become uninvestible.

The deeper implication of his argument is that investibility is not a binary condition—a country either is or is not. It is instead a question of structure, governance, and realistic expectations. A foreign company entering China today cannot expect the same terms it might negotiate in a Western market. But the evidence from Starbucks and McDonald's indicates that acceptable terms exist. The question is not whether China remains open to foreign capital, but whether foreign investors are willing to accept the terms on which that capital can operate.

Fang's position reflects both his history and his current interests. As someone who helped build the institutions through which foreign capital entered China, he has professional reasons to argue for China's continued attractiveness. But his argument also rests on observable fact: major multinational corporations continue to operate in China, continue to generate revenue, and continue to make fresh commitments. That alone suggests the investibility debate may be less settled than recent skepticism implies.