China’s top securities regulator wants to make it easier for the world to buy Chinese assets, and it is using one of its most successful market plumbing projects to do it. The China Securities Regulatory Commission, under Chairman Wu Qing, announced plans to expand the Stock Connect program to include yuan-denominated stocks listed in Hong Kong as well as real estate investment trusts. The announcement came in April 2024, and it signals something larger than a technical rule change: Beijing is methodically building the infrastructure for the yuan to function as a genuine global investment currency.
Wu Qing took the top job at the CSRC in February 2024, and expanding Stock Connect is one of his clearest early signals about where he wants to take China’s capital markets.
What Stock Connect actually is, and why this expansion matters
Think of Stock Connect as a carefully controlled pipe between two reservoirs. On one side is mainland China’s massive domestic equity market. On the other is Hong Kong, one of the world’s most internationally accessible financial hubs. The pipe has been running since 2014, letting foreign investors buy mainland-listed shares through Hong Kong brokers and letting mainland investors do the reverse.
The expansion adds new flows to that pipe. Yuan-denominated stocks, often called RMB-counter shares, are Hong Kong-listed equities that trade in Chinese yuan rather than Hong Kong dollars. REITs, meanwhile, are property-linked income vehicles that have been growing steadily in Hong Kong but remain largely out of reach for most mainland investors through official channels.
The groundwork for this was quietly laid in 2023, when Hong Kong introduced a dual-counter trading scheme. Select stocks began trading in both Hong Kong dollars and yuan on the same exchange. That dual-counter mechanism is the technical foundation the CSRC is now planning to connect directly to the Stock Connect pipeline.
The numbers behind the momentum
Northbound trading through Stock Connect, meaning foreign money flowing into mainland Chinese equities, hit a record average daily turnover of RMB 302.7 billion in February 2026.
The CSRC has also been quietly broadening access on the foreign investor side, enhancing the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor framework to let more international money managers participate in Chinese markets through official pathways.
As of now, no specific implementation date has been confirmed for the yuan-stock and REIT additions.
What this means for investors watching China
The most direct implication is for international investors who want yuan-denominated equity exposure without navigating the more complex QFII or RQDII channels. If yuan-counter stocks become eligible through Stock Connect, buying them becomes nearly as straightforward as buying any other Hong Kong-listed share through an existing brokerage account.
For mainland Chinese investors, REIT access is the more significant unlock. China’s own domestic REIT market is still young. Hong Kong’s REIT sector offers exposure to a broader range of property types and operators. Giving mainland retail and institutional investors a cleaner path into those products diversifies the investment options available to one of the world’s largest pools of household savings.