Chinese and World Equity Markets : A Review of the Volatilities and Correlations in the First Fifteen Years

After more than fifteen years of Chinese equity markets, we study how variance, covariance, and correlations have developed in these markets relative to world markets, based on the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model of Engle (2002). Chinese markets offer A-shares to domestic investors and otherwise identical B-shares to foreign investors. We find that the volatility of A-shares has declined over the past decade. We find no asymmetric volatility relative to world markets in China. Contrary to the global trend of increasing cross-country correlations, we find stationary correlations for China. A-share indices have never been correlated with world markets, and B-share indices exhibit a low degree of correlation with Western markets (0-5%) and a slightly higher degree of correlation with other Asian markets (10-20%). We interpret these findings using Gordon's growth model