Another 167 companies have sold H shares in Hong Kong since then, including Beijing-based PetroChina’s listing in 2000 and ICBC’s in 2006, according to the city’s exchange. Hong Kong was handed back to China from the British in 1997.

2007 Surge

China’s per-capita GDP climbed to $6,076 as of 2012 from $517 in 1993 as the economy expanded at an average annual pace of more than 10 percent to become the world’s second largest after the U.S., according to data compiled by the Washington- based International Monetary Fund. The growth in per-capita GDP is the fastest among 50 major economies tracked by the IMF and Bloomberg.

The nation’s stock market has produced gains for investors who picked the right times to buy and sell. The MSCI China gauge returned 680 percent from Nov. 10, 2001, when the country won entry into the World Trade Organization, through the index’s peak during the stock-market bubble on Oct. 30, 2007.

Consumer-related shares have delivered some of the biggest long-term increases as discretionary incomes grew. Tsingtao Brewery’s share price jumped more than 1,400 percent since it first traded 20 years ago. Great Wall Motor Co., the SUV maker with headquarters in Baoding, has advanced 1,660 percent since July 2008, making its Chairman Wei Jianjun Asia’s richest car executive.

Stock Picking

“With transition of growth towards consumers you would want companies that leverage consumer spending,” Nader Naeimi, the Sydney-based head of dynamic asset allocation at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., which manages about $130 billion, said by phone on July 10.

Shares of Anhui-based Maanshan Iron have dropped about 37 percent since the end of 1993.

“China is one market if you buy a tracker or ETF, you are very much at risk,” David Gaud, a Hong Kong-based senior money manager at the asset management unit of Edmond de Rothschild Group, which oversees more than $157 billion, said by phone on July 11. “If you buy funds that are selective in their picking, we are able to grab the specific names in the private segments that are providing very, very solid returns.”

Gaud said he favors health-care, consumer and alternative energy stocks.