IndexUniverse had an article up yesterday about the rebalancing at Russell Investments that occurs every June and was just implemented for 2009. IU seemed most interested in the increasing presence of Chinese stocks.

The five largest stocks in the Russell Global Index (I'm not familiar with this one) in order are;

Petrochina (PTR)
ExxonMobil (XOM)
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (IDCBY)
China Mobile (CHL) a client holding
Walmart (WMT)

We are all much more aware of China as an investment destination than we were seven years ago. I seem to remember that the first Chinese stock on the NYSE was Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical (SHI), but I may have that wrong, and then it seemed like most people knew about Petrochina early in this decade when Warren Buffet first piped up about having a position.

Fast forward a few years and US based investors can now access Chinese solar stocks, water stocks, technology companies and even shampoo companies. We clearly had a mania in Chinese stocks for a while there, then the market imploded and now things are whipping up again but the Shanghai market is still down more than half from its high, the Hang Seng down about 40% from its high and the Hang Seng H Shares, or enterprise index, is down 45% from its high.

I've disclosed my involvement with China many times before. I sold my only position in May 2007 (the other Sinopec with ticker SNP) and bought back in with China Mobile in the summer of 2008. I was a little early on both getting out and getting back in.

If IPOs like BaWang can do well, the shampoo company mentioned above, then that is reason to be concerned about overheating despite being so far below the old highs.