China Asset Management’s Milestone: A New Phase in Market Support and Capital Market Reform

ChinaAMC’s rise to the RMB 1 trillion ETF threshold comes against the backdrop of the rapid growth of passive investment strategies within China’s financial system. By the end of 2025, China’s ETF market crossed RMB 6 trillion in total assets, expanding by roughly RMB 2.3 trillion in a single year as both domestic and foreign capital sought exposure to China’s equity markets. The firm’s leading products, including its CSI 300 ETF and technology-themed funds focused on sectors like artificial intelligence and robotics, have driven substantial net inflows and daily trading volumes, reinforcing its dominant position in a competitive ETF landscape.

Regulators in Beijing have actively promoted ETFs as a core infrastructure for market liquidity and investor participation, particularly after an extended market downturn from 2021 to 2024 that saw major indices sharply decline. This has included substantive reforms such as reducing ETF management fees from 0.5 % to 0.15 %, which has significantly lowered costs for retail and institutional investors alike, making ETFs a more attractive long-term investment vehicle. These policy shifts aim to institutionalize the market further, encouraging long-term capital allocation and deepening participation from pension funds, insurance companies, and cross-border institutional investors.

An important dimension of ChinaAMC’s recent success has been ETF Connect expansion, a regulatory framework that broadens the pool of eligible funds accessible to overseas investors through northbound trading links. With the number of eligible ETFs reaching record levels and ChinaAMC’s qualifying products leading the pack, this cross-border connectivity is facilitating sustained inflows of medium- to long-term foreign capital into China’s onshore equity markets. This development reflects Beijing’s gradual opening-up of its capital markets while also diversifying investor participation beyond domestic retail.

Analysts view this milestone not just as a corporate achievement but as a structural indicator that China’s financial ecosystem is shifting toward more market-based investment channels, with ETFs playing an increasingly central role in capital formation and risk distribution. As ChinaAMC and its peers continue to innovate product offerings aligned with key economic sectors and technological breakthroughs, the ETF market is positioned to be a key engine in attracting diversified capital flows and supporting China’s broader economic and financial reform agenda.