The past 12 months have been punishing for foreign exchange traded fund investors with exposure to China, but fresh signs of “national team” involvement might give risk-averse market participants pause for thought.

Z-Ben Advisors, a specialist research consultancy based in Shanghai, noted in a report released last month that institutional investors were continuing to increase their equity holdings via ETFs and that this activity was extending beyond the historical core China national team players.

The national team term was coined in 2015 to describe large, state-affiliated institutions that intervened to prop up the stock market, and was also used to describe the institutions behind very large inflows to some broad-market ETFs in August this year.