Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said he’s been buying shares of Chinese companies even as growth in the world’s fourth-largest economy slows.

Rogers, 66, started buying Chinese shares in 1988 and is now favoring equities traded in Hong Kong and Singapore that are cheaper than yuan-denominated stocks in Shanghai. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, which tracks the city’s so- called H shares, climbed 1.4 percent today. The CSI 300 Index, which tracks shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen, lost 0.9 percent.

China is slowing but “some parts of the Chinese economy will be totally unaffected by what happens in the West,” Rogers said in an interview in Hong Kong today. “I started buying in October again. I never sold any Chinese shares.”

The global credit crisis has dragged the world’s largest economies into recession this year, hurting demand for Chinese products. China’s exports fell for the first time in seven years in November, imports plunged and output contracted by a record.

The People’s Bank of China has cut interest rates five times in three months to lend support to a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) spending package intended to revive in an economy that grew in the third quarter at the slowest pace in five years.

Hong Kong’s H-share Index plunged 51 percent this year, the biggest annual decline since at least 1994. The CSI 300, which tracks yuan-denominated A shares listed on China’s two exchanges, fell 66 percent in 2008, the second-worst performance in Asia this year after Vietnam’s benchmark index.

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Companies on the Hong Kong measure are valued at an average 10 times estimated profit, cheaper than the CSI 300’s 13 times.

Rogers, who correctly predicted the start of the commodities rally in 1999, has written books including “A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market.”

The investor said he has been buying Chinese agricultural stocks amid government measures to bolster economic growth. Other industries he favors are infrastructure in China, water and tourism in Asia. He didn’t name any specific stocks.

Premier Wen Jiabao unveiled the 4 trillion yuan stimulus package last month, which included spending on roads and bridges. Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, pledged to promote economic growth, according to a speech posted on the central bank’s Web site today.

(Source)⇒Bloomberg