Thank you for the question.
There are really two reasons that we invest in China. The first is that it is a very large market. It is the second-largest capital market in the world, and therefore it is one that we can diversify into. It's one that is, in many ways, uncorrelated with the rest of the world and, arguably, increasingly uncorrelated with the rest of the world.
From a portfolio construction point of view, that is quite valuable because when there's turmoil in other major markets, there may not be turmoil in that market, and vice versa. The diversification benefit is the most powerful factor that encourages us to continue to have some exposure to that market, given that it's the second biggest market.
The second reason that we invest is alpha, or what we call outperformance relative to an index. That's very hard to come by, but it's incredibly valuable for a portfolio. If you can pick the right stock over the wrong stock, if you can pick Alibaba over Luckin Coffee—which some of you will have seen was a debacle and faced delisting from the U.S. exchange just recently—the right building over the wrong building, the right company over the wrong company or the right fund over the wrong fund, there's a huge amount of value. There's a lot of research showing how much alpha, how much value, there is in that, and it's much more than in developed markets.
Those are really the two reasons we invest in the market, and so far it has performed well for us. The Chinese investments over the fiscal year were up almost 10% and performed well. Again, if you look at the performance, just in March for example, the Chinese market was essentially flat in comparison to where the U.S. markets and North American markets were trading at that point. There are the reasons.
Having said that, we have two sides to our mandate, maximizing returns without undue risk. It's very important for us to thoroughly understand all the risks of investing in any market, not just at an individual security level or an individual company level but also the risks of the market overall and where they might be going. We spend a lot of time understanding those risks.