Is it time to ditch China and look elsewhere? There's just one big problem

As for the entire emerging-markets asset class, an alternative to China hasn't materialised yet. Investors better get used to the notion that China is here to stay

There’s an old Polish saying that when two people quarrel, a third will benefit. And so global investors are now looking for the country best positioned to gain from the US-China trade war.

China has been good to foreign investors over the past decade. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008, the MSCI China Index has offered an annualized 8.6 percent return.

But last year was bruising. China staged one of the world’s worst stock routs, with the benchmark MSCI index tumbling about 20 percent. Meanwhile, the yuan flirted dangerously close to the psychologically important 7-per-dollar, a