China has injected more money into Hong Kong’s stock market this year than ever before, with investments through the Stock Connect scheme reaching HK$820 billion ($104 billion) so far, according to the Financial Times. That total already beats last year’s figure of HK$807.9 billion, putting Hong Kong’s stock exchange on track for its strongest year of mainland inflows since the program started. At the same time, the investment surge highlights how closely Hong Kong’s markets are now tied to decisions coming out of Beijing. The city’s rebound after years of COVID-era stagnation is no longer about global inflows; it’s almost entirely powered by mainland cash. Stock Connect dominates Hong Kong trading The Stock Connect, launched in 2014, links the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges with Hong Kong. It lets mainland investors move funds across the border without violating China’s capital control laws. The program was designed to give limited, regulated exposure to foreign assets. But in 2025, it’s become the primary gateway for Chinese investors to access assets not available on the mainland. Only individuals with at least Rmb500,000 ($70,000) can use it, but that hasn’t stopped them. HK$4.5 trillion has now flowed into Hong Kong through the platform, with over a third of that coming in just the last two years. That kind of momentum is changing daily trading dynamics. Southbound activity, money going from mainland China into Hong Kong, now accounts for more than half of all trades on the main board of Hong Kong’s stock exchange. That’s a massive leap from 2019, when the same trades made up less than 20% of daily turnover. The appeal of Stock Connect is that it also opens the door to tech firms like Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu, companies based in China but listed in Hong Kong, where mainland investors normally can’t touch them. Their shares have rebounded sharply this year after DeepSeek , a Chinese AI start-up, released a new large language model and tensions between tech firms and China’s regulators started cooling off. Beijing pushes policy to boost Hong Kong’s appeal This entire wave of capital is getting a serious push from policymakers. At a Hong Kong conference in January, central bank governor Pan Gongsheng said China would back “more high-quality enterprises to list and issue bonds” in Hong Kong and would also “increase the proportion of national foreign exchange reserves allocated in Hong Kong.” Pan’s comments followed earlier action from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which in 2024 introduced measures to encourage mainland companies to list in the city and to make the link between China’s and Hong Kong’s markets even tighter. It worked! This year, Hong Kong’s IPO pipeline hit a record high, with a rush of mainland firms lining up for secondary listings in the city. Investors, many of whom fled during earlier crackdowns on the private sector and a real estate market now in its fourth year of decline, are slowly returning. But it’s not global capital rushing in. It’s still mostly China reallocating within itself. Cryptopolitan Academy: Coming Soon - A New Way to Earn Passive Income with DeFi in 2025. Learn More
