Asia has suffered a disproportionate number of natural disasters recently, but its equity markets have hardly blinked. The MSCI Asia ex-Japan index has had its best first quarter in several years, up a tidy 13 per cent. That is three times better than the FTSE 100, for example. Net foreign institutional flows into the region’s stock markets, China and Japan excepted, hit $27bn in the first three months, easily reversing the $13bn in outflows seen last year.

Many investors are attracted by valuations. Asia ex-Japan is trading at 11 times forward earnings, a 10th below its 10-year average. China is trading at nine times, almost a third below its average during the same period. Economic growth is another attraction for investors, suggesting that these multiples will expand: the International Monetary Fund reckons the region’s four biggest economies outside Japan will grow at an average of 7 per cent in each of the next three years, just above the pace of the past three.

But hold your tigers. China stocks may look cheap, but the biggest companies by market capitalisation are banks and property developers most exposed to Beijing’s tightening measures. Mixed economic data – a slight pick-up in inflation in March, an improving manufacturing sector, weak imports – make imminent monetary loosening improbable. And while profit margins on the Hang Seng, a proxy for China, are a sixth below their five-year average, structural wage inflation and high oil prices suggest the margin squeeze has further to run. That makes a classic rebound based on cost-cutting less likely. Moreover, emerging Asian equity funds, which drive regional inflows, are already overweight China.