Reaching out

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has returned to Washington after her first foreign trip, which seems by most accounts to have been a success. On the China leg of her trip – consisting of Saturday meetings with Beijing bigwigs, and a Sunday split between church and civil society activists – she focused on economic ties while keeping pesky human rights issues mostly out of sight (presumably under house arrest with those civil society activists). As a getting-to-know-you trip, it didn’t achieve much in the way of real deals, although the US and China did agree to establish a new high-level dialogue. China’s welcoming of foreign guests may also be extending to the A-share market, where it is reported the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) quota will be raised to US$30 billion by 2014, up from the current US$11 billion. Of course, a higher quota won’t help to attract many investors if the economy and the A-share market stay in the doldrums. In another attempt to bring both back to life, the government is planning special stimulus package aimed at the property sector, though there are some doubts that Beijing’s plan will do much to turn the sector around.