Invest in India, not China: Billionaire investor

After China created barriers in taking back his money invested there, billionaire investor Mark Mobius tells people that India is the best alternative for investment.

In a statement that clearly indicates that investors are preferring India as an alternative to China, billionaire investor Mark Mobius, founder of Mobius Capital Partners, has complained that China is not letting him take his money out and claimed that his preferred option for investment is India now.

"I'm personally affected because I have an account with HSBC in Shanghai. I can't get my money out. The government is restricting the flow of money out of the country," Mobius told FOX Business host Maria Bartiromo. "So I would be very, very careful investing in China," he said.

How is Beijing troubling him?
He said that China's economy is heading in a different direction than its former open-minded-market revolutionary leader Deng Xiaoping. "Now you have a government which is taking gold in shares of companies all over China. That means they're going to try to control all these companies," he stated. "So I don't think it's a very good picture when you see the government becoming more and more control oriented in the economy," Mobius claimed.

Beijing made a "very significant" effort to allegedly prevent Mobius from removing capital from Chinese-based stocks. "I can't get an explanation of why they're doing this. It's just amazing. They're putting all kinds of barriers," he added. "They don't say, 'No, you can't get your money out,' but they say, 'Give us all the records from 20 years of how you've made this money,' and so forth. It's crazy."

India best alternative to China
According to him, India is the best alternative for investment along with Brazil. "You've got a billion people, they can do the same thing that the Chinese do. They can do the same kind of manufacturing and so forth," he continued. "I'm now in Brazil, and Brazil, you've got 250 million-plus people, very good people, open society. Hey, why not come here? It's another alternative."

His comments come days after the American Chamber of Commerce in China said that a majority of US companies are not seeing China as the top three investment priority.

Last month, Mobius in an interview with Money Control said that investors will profit more in India than in other equities markets given the optimism regarding India's future growth trajectory. "Growth rate in India is superior to most countries around the world and it can also be sustained in the long run on the back of the positive impact from the shift from China to India in terms of software and production, supported by the massive technology change," Mobius had said.

Why India?
Also in an article written in 2022, he had claimed that India will be taking greater market share from China in terms of manufactured exports over time. "Additionally, India's exports of software continue to do very well. Perhaps one of the main reasons for India's continued high growth rate is the fact that it is, and will remain, one of the youngest nations on the earth and will be the home of more than 1 billion Internet users by 2025."

"The average Indian consumer will become wealthier and due to the richness of Indian cultural diversity, will have extremely broad and varied consumption-preference scopes. The number of Indian families moving into the middle-income bracket continues to increase. Therefore, spending on essential consumption categories such as food, beverages, apparel, transport, housing, and personal care will dramatically increase, while spending on services such as healthcare, education, and entertainment will grow even faster," he wrote.