Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor

The Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (Chinese: 合格境外机构投资者; pinyin: hégé jìngwài jīgòu tóuzīzhě) program, one of the first efforts to internationalize the RMB, represents China's effort to allow, on a selective basis, global institutional investors to invest in its RMB denominated capital market. Once licensed, foreign investors are permitted to buy RMB-denominated "A shares" in China's mainland Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Thus foreign investors benefit from an opportunity to invest onshore, which is otherwise often insulated from the rest of the world, and subject to capital controls governing the movement of assets in-and-out of the country.