Students at Jing'an Education College Affiliated School in Shanghai. Philippe Lopez | AFP | Getty Images

The U.S.-China trade war is a major factor dominating global economic worries, but some investors think they've found a good bet beyond the headlines. Hong Kong-based asset manager Value Partners, for example, is honing in on China's fast-growing education sector. "We're seeing huge potential in education," King Lun Au, chief executive officer of Value Partners Group, said Monday on CNBC's "Squawk Box." The sector is still relatively underdeveloped, but things are changing fast: China, in September last year, changed its policy to start opening up the sector by allowing some schools to be run on a for-profit basis, Au said. "And so that's a huge opportunity," he added.

China in recent years has relaxed policies that limited family sizes, which is a factor that is expected to increase demand for schooling. The country's education sector is expected to grow to nearly 3 trillion yuan ($432 billion) in 2020 from 1.6 trillion yuan in 2015, Deloitte said in a 2016 report. Value Partners announced in July an agreement with a Chinese partner to set up the fund in which investments will primarily be in private higher and vocational education in mainland China. It is targeting assets under management of 5 billion Chinese yuan ($720 million), according to the announcement.

'Just started to open up'