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东北财经大学本科毕业论文 合格境外机构投资者制度在中国大陆的实践的研究 ——基于台湾合格境外机构投资者制度的实践经验 Research into the Practice of QFII Scheme in Chinese Mainland —— Based on the Experience of Taiwan QFII Scheme 作 者 Student Name 院 系 School / Institute 专 业 Programme 年 级 Grade 学 号 Student No. 指导教师 Supervisor 绩 Score Surrey International Institute Business Management 2009 2194009067 Associate Professor Yu-Kyung Kim 答辩日期 Date of Defense 成 SHI Fangyu Abstract This thesis attempts to compare Taiwan and Chinese Mainland’s Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) programs, explore the similarities and differences between these two programs and predict whether Chinese Mainland will go the way which Taiwan did. Through comparing thoroughly from QFII introduction backgrounds, reasons, measures of QFII scheme itself, general effects to the ultimate fate of QFII scheme, we find some important factors which differentiate two QFII schemes. Those essential factors include the degree of interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate liberalization, the complexity of macro-economic environment, the scale of economy and the size of foreign exchange reserves. Therefore, the conclusion in this thesis has two aspects. Firstly, the progress of capital account liberalization is inevitable and irreversible in China, and the deregulation and phase-out of QFII program will be the goal of its introduction, just like what Taiwan did on 2003. Secondly, however, it is impossible for Chinese Mainland to liberalize the capital account as quick as Taiwan did in the 1990s, because Chinese Mainland faces different reform circumstances, and more sophisticated internal and external macro-economic environments. Thus, the road of deregulating the QFII program and realizing the goal of capital account liberalization in China will be a more arduous and tortuous process than that of other emerging economies. Key words: Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor; Capital account liberalization; Taiwan experience; Schemes Comparison i Contents List of Tables ......................................................................................................................... i List of Figures ...................................................................................................................... ii List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................... iv Chapter I. Introduction .........................................................................................................1 1.1 Research Background .............................................................................................1 1.2 Research Purpose ...................................................................................................2 1.3 Research Method ....................................................................................................2 1.4 Significance of This Thesis ......................................................................................2 1.5 Organization of This Thesis .....................................................................................3 Chapter II: Literature Review ...............................................................................................3 2.1 Related Theories of QFII Scheme ...........................................................................3 2.2 A Brief Review of QFII Related Researches ............................................................5 Chapter III: The Research into the Taiwan QFII Scheme .....................................................7 3.1 Economic and Financial Background of Introducing QFII Scheme in Taiwan ..........8 3.2 Reasons of Introducing QFII Scheme in Taiwan ......................................................9 3.3 The Evolution and Development of Taiwan QFII Scheme ......................................13 3.4 Stock Market Openness,Accessibility and Current Conditions ............................16 Chapter IV: The Development of QFII Scheme in Chinese Mainland ................................18 4.1 Background and Reasons of Introducing QFII Scheme in Chinese Mainland .......18 4.2 Evolution of Chinese Mainland’s QFII scheme ......................................................20 4.3 Openness and Current Conditions of Chinese Mainland’s Stock Market ...............24 Chapter V: Comparison of Taiwan and Chinese Mainland QFII scheme............................28 5.1 Similarities and Differences in Introducing Background .........................................28 5.2 Similarities and Differences in Schemes Themselves ...........................................30 5.3 Similarities and Differences in Effects of QFII Schemes on Stock Markets............32 Chapter VI: Conclusion ......................................................................................................40 6.1 Limitations of Study................................................................................................43 i References ........................................................................................................................44 Appendixes ........................................................................................................................45 ii List of Tables Table 3-1 Changes of Qualification Requirements for Taiwan QFIIs 13 Table 3-2 Changes of Investment Quotas for QFII (billion USD) 14 Table 3-3 Changes of QFII Shareholding Limits 14 Table 3-4 Investment Tools and Industries Restriction for QFII 15 Table 3-5 Changes of QFII’s Capital Inward Remittance and Repatriation 16 Table 4-1 Changes of QFII Qualifications 22 Table 4-2 Changes of Shareholding Cap 23 Table 4-3 Changes of Restrictions on RMB Financial Instruments 23 i List of Figures Figure 3-1 Comparison of Turnover Ratio in terms of Trading Value in Major Stock Market11 Figure 3-2 Comparison of P/E Ratio in Major Stock Markets 11 Figure 3-3 Highlights of Securities Margin Trading on TSEC Market 12 Figure 3-4 Comparison of Volatility in Major Stock Markets 12 Figure 4-1 QFII Investment Quota and Market value of A-shares held by QFIIs 25 Figure 4-2 Market Capitalization of Several Emerging Economies’ Stock Markets 27 Figure 4-3 Turnover Rate of Several Emerging Economies’ Stock Markets 28 Figure 5-1 Net QFII Capital Inflow Comparison 33 Figure 5-2 Share of Annual Stock Trading Volume in 2010 34 Figure 5-3 The Changes of Investors’ Structure in Taiwan Stock Market 34 Figure 5-4 The Changes of Turnover Rate in Taiwan Stock Market 37 Figure 5-5 The Changes of Turnover Rate in Chinese Mainland Stock Market 37 Figure 5-6 PE Ratios of Four Different Stock Markets 38 Figure 5-7 Changes of PE Ratio in Chinese Mainland’s Stock Markets 39 ii List of Abbreviations CAPM: Capital Asset Pricing Model CSRC: China Securities Regulatory Commission GFII: General Foreign Individual Investor IAPM: International Asset Pricing Model IOSCO: International Organization of Securities Commission PBC: People’s Bank of China QDII: Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor QFII: Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor SAFE: State Administration of Foreign Exchange SASAC: State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission TSEC: Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Commission iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my grandparents for their meticulous care to me for the past 21 years, thank my parents for enabling me to receive such excellent but also very expensive university education, and many thanks to all my family members and relatives. Also, I want to thank my dissertation tutor, Professor. Yu-Kyung Kim, for his valuable time, knowledge, experience and advices input into my thesis. His elaborate guidance ensure this thesis to be finished smoothly. Moreover, I want to acknowledge all my friends and classmates who help and support me during the completion of my thesis and the time we spent in university. iv Research into the Practice of QFII Scheme in Chinese Mainland —— Based on the Experience of Taiwan QFII Scheme① Chapter I. Introduction 1.1 Research Background In 1990s, many emerging economies began to liberalize their capital account to allow capital to flow inward and outward freely. In April 1997, the Interim Committee of International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to amend the articles to promote that “the liberalization of capital movements is one of the purposes of the IMF”, and this announcement issued in a statement at the Annual Meetings of World Bank and IMF in Hong Kong in the same year September ( Eichengreen & Mussa, 1998). However, after this, the Asia Financial Crisis happened and made the developing countries which initially attempt to take advantage of the large volume of international financial flows to develop their domestic economy, but eventually the radical capital account liberalization policies hurt themselves deeply. Thus, made the questions of whether one country should liberalize their capital account and what sequence should the country follow became a hot debate. On December 1st 2002, “The Provisional Measures on Administration of Domestic Securities Investments by Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII)” was jointly promulgated by China Securities Regulatory Commission and People’s Bank of China which marked the first step of Chinese securities market opening. After 11 years’ development, there were 213 QFIIs permitted to invest in Chinese securities market and the total quotas accumulated at US $ 41.745 billion (CSRC, 2013). In January 14th 2013, the former chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission Guo Shuqing said that the quotas of Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) can be increased by 9 or 10 times on the Asian Financial Forum (China Securities Journal, 2013). ① In order to make a template, the dissertation contents may have been edited. 1 If that is the case, the total quotas of QFII will be US $ 720 or 800 billion. However, on the other side, the foreign exchange reserves reached at US $ 3,311.6 billion at the end of 2012, and China now is the biggest holder of foreign exchange reserves in the world (PBC, 2013). Besides, since 2005 when Chinese authorities employed market-based managed float exchange-rate mechanism, the real exchange rate of RMB had increased by 31.9% during those eight years (SAFE, 2013). The rigid foreign exchange-rate regime and high expectations of RMB appreciation increased the contradictions between capital account liberalization and rapid increase of foreign exchange reserves. Thus, the reform of Chinese financial system has come to a crossroad, and which road this giant would choose to go arouse our interest. 1.2 Research Purpose The aims of this paper are that: a) to find out the development history of QFII schemes in Taiwan and Chinese Mainland; b) to compare the Taiwan’s QFII program with the Chinese Mainland’s QFII program and find out differences and similarities; c) analyzing the differences, find out the reasons behind them, and predict the future of Chinese Mainland’s QFII program. 1.3 Research Method In this article, I use both descriptive and exploratory research methods. I use descriptive research methods to describe QFII development histories in Taiwan and Chinese Mainland respectively, and make comparisons. Besides, I use exploratory research methods to analyze two different QFII schemes and explain reasons. The datum used in this paper is mainly secondary datum which is cited from the internet, some official websites and other people’s academic literatures. 1.4 Significance of This Thesis Numerous studies have been done about QFII scheme in terms of general comparison and giving policy suggestions, but there are a few research papers that investigate deeply into the reasons behind the differences and predict the future through analyzing the history. In 2 this thesis, through comparing and analyzing the difference of QFII introduction background, the reasons of differences, and the current conditions of two stock markets, predict whether the similar outcomes may happen in Chinese Mainland as in Taiwan. More importantly, through comparison, relevant policy makers can formulate policies which conforms to Chinese Mainland’s actual conditions in the future, and also, stock market investors can have a general overview of stock market’s prospects. 1.5 Organization of This Thesis The main content of this thesis consist of six chapters. The first chapter includes the research background, research purpose, research method and significance of this thesis. In the second chapter, there is a Taiwan QFII scheme development history. In the third chapter, we will describe the past and current conditions of China’s QFII program. In the fourth chapter, there will be a comparison of two QFII schemes and aim to find out the differences and similarities. The sixth chapter is the last chapter of this paper which concludes and states the limitations of this research. Chapter II: Literature Review Definition of QFII Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (hereinafter referred to as "QFII" which can be a single or a plural, as the case may be) are defined as overseas fund management institutions, insurance companies, securities companies and other assets management institutions which have been approved by China Securities Regulatory Commission (hereinafter referred to as "CSRC") to invest in China's securities market and granted investment quota by State Administration of Foreign Exchange (hereinafter referred to as "SAFE") (CSRC, 2002). 2.1 Related Theories of QFII Scheme 2.1.1 The Theory of Financial Liberalization 3 Financial liberalization is the process of enabling the operation of a nation’s financial sector to transfer from state controlled economy to the market economy. It has two parts, one is the liberalization of financial asset pricing and the other is internalization of capital mobility. As for the theory of financial asset pricing liberalization, the representative is Ronald McKinnon (2006) and he stated that if the interest rate and foreign exchange rate are strictly regulated by government for a long time, the pricing of them tend to be seriously distorted. So, in order to open up the domestic stock market, it is better to liberalize the interest rate and float currency first, since they are the essentials of resources allocation. Internalization of capital mobility means allowing foreign capital enter into domestic market and also permit domestic investors to invest outside, that is to say, giving capital enough freedom to invest globally. Currently, along with the QFII scheme, China also introduced the QDII① program to utilize the huge volume of foreign reserves to invest globally. 2.1.2 The Theory of Opening Up Capital Account The theory of opening up capital account means relax or abolish the regulation of capital or financial account, which include the cross-border capital transfer, direct investment, securities investment and other investments. For the good side, the opening up of capital account enables the country get the foreign capital to boost the domestic economy as well as to add vitality into the stock market. Nevertheless, on the bad side, the reform of financial system is a high risk activity, if one country choosing the wrong strategies, the bad results are inevitable. Regarding Taiwan as an example, which used a gradual opening up policy and embraced the economic take-off ultimately. However, the country likes Thailand which experienced a major financial crisis during 1997 Asia Financial Crisis because of its radical opening up strategies. 2.1.3 The Standard International Assets Pricing Model (IAPM) ① QDII: Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor is an institutional investor that has met certain qualifications to invest in securities markets outside its home country. 4 The IAPM is a variant of the capital assets pricing model (CAPM), and usually used in allocating international investments. The CAPM was created by economist William Sharpe in mid-1960s (Richard, 2009), and this model can be used to evaluate the rate of return one investor can get from the asset which has a certain level of risks. According to this model, the rate of return of an investment should equal to its cost of capital, and the higher returns always accompanied with higher risks. Therefore, following the logic of CAPM, the stock market liberalization may lower the cost of capital, because the risks of stock market are shared by domestic investors and foreign investors after opening. Later, this reasoning had been tested by Peter Blair Henry’s research in 2000, and he found that a country’s aggregate equity price index experiences abnormal returns of 3.3 percent per month in real dollar terms during an eight-month window leading up to the implementation of its initial stock market liberalization. 2.2 A Brief Review of QFII Related Researches 2.2.1 Foreign Scholars Prasad and Rajan (2008) believe what the cross-country regressions suggest that there is a little connection between foreign capital inflows and rapid economic growth for developing countries or emerging markets. They find that the major benefits of capital account liberalization may bring to emerging economies is indirect such as speeding up institutional development and financial factor development, and catalyzing the optimization of corporate governance of listed companies. Besides, they state that the capital account liberalization is inevitable for modern countries, because the openness of international trade and utilizing the methods like under-invoicing and over-invoicing can easily make the capital accounts become more open, even through governments implement capital account control policies. Eichengreen and Mussa (1998) also state that the capital account liberalization and financial liberalization are inevitable for both developing and industrial countries, because the quick development of communication technologies reduce the chances of information 5 asymmetry between different regions and increase the mobility of international capital. Besides, they also warned that the sudden opening of capital account is full of risks, and both government and corporate governance should emphasize more on risk management. Finally, they stress that in order to make best use of capital inflows, government should set up appropriate macro-economic policies as well as pursue right opening sequence. Lin and Chen (2006) conducted the research through analyze the returns of the highest and lowest 10 stocks in three certain industries which held by QFIIs before and after the liberalization in Taiwan and found from their empirical research that firstly, the shares largely held by QFIIs tend to have better performance than those shares less held by QFIIs; secondly, the performance of QFII was better after deregulating the QFII system than the performance before liberalization, and this means the deregulation of QFII system do bring some benefits to give foreign investors more free space to employ their professional investment skills. Also, because of good performance of QFIIs, herd behavior tends to appear among individual investors. Henry (2000) stated that according to correctness of the standard IAPM, the country’s aggregate cost of equity capital will fall when it opens its stock market to foreign investors. Holding the future cash flows remains unchanged, and it can be seen that there was an increase in emerging economies’ equity price index when the stock market predicts an upcoming stock market liberalization. So, a fall of cost of equity capital means listed companies can finance their their productions at a lower cost, this is the case, because the falling of the cost of equity capital will turn some investment projects which initially had a negative net present value (NPV) to positive NPV. Thus, listed companies can operate more efficiently, and further, made the entire economy benefit from foreign investment. 2.2.2 Chinese Scholars Qibin & Ba, Shusong (2003) mainly focus on the effects of QFII on the stock markets and the deregulation processes of QFII schemes in Taiwan and India. Moreover, they give some suggestions on Chinese Mainland’s QFII system like supervision enhancement and 6 deregulating restrictions. Pan, Wenrong (2010) stated that after the introduction of QFII and QDII programs, Chinese stock markets’ co-movement with other global stock markets have been increased. According to his research, the correlation of Chinese stock markets’ stock prices with other Asia stock markets has been strengthened but still in a weak correlation condition. In sum, foreign scholars tend to treat the emerging markets as a whole and research more on the merits and demerits of capital account liberalization. Chinese scholars tend to compare the similarities and differences of Taiwan and Chinese Mainland’s QFII scheme and give decision-makers some suggestions. Only a few researches dig out the reasons behind the capital account liberalization in Taiwan and Chinese Mainland and predict the future of Chinese Mainland’s QFII scheme. Therefore, we try to integrate the excellent research outcomes which did by both foreign scholars and Chinese scholars, and analyze the QFII scheme deeply and in more details. Chapter III: The Research into the Taiwan QFII Scheme As a predecessor of QFII scheme in China, Taiwan’s successful experience can always be treated as a blueprint for other emerging economies to learn. Going back to 1982, Taiwan government formulated the plan of introducing QFII scheme and divides it into three stages. First, it was to open the securities market indirectly through issuing Overseas Beneficiary Certificates and Closed End Funds to enable the foreign investors invest in Taiwan stock market indirectly, and this period is from 1983 to 1990. The second stage is using QFII scheme to introduce foreign institutional investors invest in stock market directly but under some restrictions, and it is worth to see that in 1996 Taiwan allowed the individual foreigners to invest in stock market, and this period is from 1991 to 2003. The final stage is the period after 2003 when Taiwan announced to abolish QFII scheme and did not set restrictions for mobilizing of international capital any more, and completely open the securities market for all kinds of foreign investors (Lu, 2003). 7 3.1 Economic and Financial Background of Introducing QFII Scheme in Taiwan 3.1.1 Economic Background In the 1980s, Taiwan began to upgrade its industries and turning the traditional manufacturing industries to high technology industries, therefore, a group of big electronics company began to appear. In order to develop those capital intensive industries, injecting a huge amount of money to coordinate with the development of industry upgrading is needed. Thus, Taiwan opening the direct investment channel for foreign investors to invest in securities market on a step by step basis. 3.1.2 Financial Background In the 1980s, the economic structure of Taiwan changed dramatically, and government emphasized more on freedom rather than regulation to boost economy. During this period, increasingly commodities exportation lead to enlarge the foreign trade surplus, and the continuous increase of foreign exchange reserves exert huge pressure to the domestic money supply. So, the foreign exchange rate of Taiwan dollar forced to rise continuously. The complicated new situations push the Taiwan central bank to change the old foreign exchange policy and interest rate policy to adapt the fast development of economy, and promote financial liberalization and internationalization. Interest rate liberalization: In the 1970s, Taiwan began to appear inflation, and the government tried to control it by interest-rate hike and cut, but facing more and more complex economic conditions, government regulations became less and less efficient and effective. Therefore, at the start of 1980s, Taiwan began to liberalize the interest rate. The first step is in 1980 when commercial banks can set loan rates themselves under the upper and lower limits set by Central Bank of Taiwan. In 1986, the commercial banks can set their own saving interest rates accord with their own operation conditions and capacity. Eventually, in 1989, commercial banks did not need to follow the Central Bank’s upper and lower limits of interest rate anymore and this marked the complete interest rate liberalization in Taiwan. 8 Exchange rate liberalization: In 1970s, with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, Taiwan decided not to fix its exchange rates by tying Taiwan dollars to the US dollars and allowed the exchange rates to float to adjust the changes in the market. In 1979, Taiwan established foreign exchange market, and set up central exchange rate system which means the actual market exchange rate can just float under the upper and lower limits. Moreover, in 1980s, the trade conflicts between America and Taiwan became aggravated, the trade surplus in Taiwan became larger and larger. Therefore, America forced Taiwan to abandon the central exchange rate system and appreciate Taiwan dollar. Finally, in 1989, Taiwan realized the liberalization of exchange rate, and let it decided by the market demand and supply. From the financial liberalization process of Taiwan, we can find that the internal financial liberalization was go ahead of financial internalization, and because of this, the market determination of interest-rate and exchange-rate can help to lay the solid foundation for the capital account opening and enabling the opening process of securities market to be more smoothly. 3.2 Reasons of Introducing QFII Scheme in Taiwan 3.2.1: The Basic Needs of Rapid Economic Development and Boom of International Trade Practices show that the free market can allocate and pricing resources in a more effective and efficient way than government. Moreover, as the first step of economic opening, the boom of trade let Taiwan becomes more international. Then, finance, as an important role in globalization, need to be literalized to compatible with the development of the economy. Therefore, QFII was adopted as a gradual opening up policy help the finance sector realize the liberalization. 3.2.2: Industries Structure Changes and Upgrading In the early 1980s, Taiwan government made several economic development plans and established some high-technology industry parks to promote the Taiwan’s high-tech industries. In order to expand the funding sources of economic development, introduction of 9 the foreign investment into Taiwan stock market through QFII scheme became a good choice. Later, it was found that the introducing QFII scheme was a wise decision. And other researchers find that the shares of listed electronic companies accounts for over 50% of daily trading value of QFIIs (Lin & Chen, 2006). So, the foreign investors do contribute to the take-off of Taiwan electronic industries. 3.2.3: Saving the Immature Stock Market During the late five years of 1980s, Taiwan experienced a great surge in stock market, and the average PE ratio reached 100. Then, at the beginning of 1990, Taiwan stock index reached the highest peak ever at 12682.11, and then beginning to drop to 2485.25 in the middle of October. The stock index dropped by 80% during 8 months and it was the greatest fall ever in the world securities history. In order to restore market confidence, Taiwan introduced the QFII scheme formally in January 1991. Obviously, Taiwan hoped foreign investment capital can inject more money to the stock market and save it from crisis. Thus, we can find that in all aspects Taiwan stock market is an immature stock market. Generally speaking, there are four distinct features for an immature stock market, they are high turnover ratio, high PE ratio, high percentage of margin trading and high price volatility (Lin and Chen, 2006). And below are charts and statistics. a) High turnover ratio: It can be clear that before introducing QFII program, Taiwan stock market’ s turnover ratio was the highest among 7 stock markets and it was nearly 6 times more than those of other stock markets. And this situation of having very high turnover ratio stands in sharp contrast to the low turnover ratio among those highly developed stock markets like New York Stock Exchange or London Stock Exchange. The condition of having very high turnover ratio in Taiwan lasted for a long time. 10 Figure 3-1 Source: Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Commission (Lin & Chen, 2006) b) High PE ratio: Comparing with other developed stock markets, it can be seen that before 1995, Taiwan stock market’s PE ratio was the second highest among 7 stock markets, and just a little bit lower than that of Japan. The reasons behind are that the shares’ prices are overvalued and the profitability of listed companies were not good enough, because listed companies put more efforts on making individual investors happy rather than implementing long-term development strategies. Figure 3-2 Source: Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Commission (Lin & Chen, 2006) c) High percentage of margin trading: The chart illustrates that the margin trading took 11 nearly 30% to 40% of stock market trading from 1994 to 2002, and around 5% of them are short selling. Both of those investment instruments can be used as either hedge tools or risky speculative tools. Overusing the investment instruments like margin trading can easily fluctuate share prices and make the stock market unstable. Figure 3-3 Source: Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Commission. (Lin & Chen, 2006) d) High price volatility: According to this line chart, we can find that Taiwan stock market’s volatility peaked at 2 in 1992, which demonstrate the volatility of Taiwan stock market was quite high compare with those of other mature markets. High price volatility may caused by overusing margin trading and short selling. Also, inefficient information disclosure system sometimes may cause overreaction among investors and lead to high price volatility. Figure 3-4 Source: Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Commission (Lin & Chen, 2006) 12 3.3 The Evolution and Development of Taiwan QFII Scheme The QFII as a transitional scheme has many restrictions in terms of investors’ qualifications, shareholding percentages, investment tools and industries, remittance and repatriation of capital as well as investment quotas at the time introduced it. And those restrictions can guarantee the stabilization of the domestic financial system and prevent from the sudden strike of hot money. 3.3.1 The Qualification Requirements for QFII Table 3-1: Changes of Qualification Requirements for Taiwan QFIIs Bank Insurance company World rankings in term of total assets (top of ) Minium securities assets under managed (>= billion USD) 1991.1 500 1993 Fund management company Years of engaging in insurance business (>=years) Minium securities assets under managed (>= billion USD) Years of setting up (>=years) Total assets of investment funds (>= billion USD) 0.3 10 0.5 5 0.5 1000 0.3 5 0.5 3 0.3 1995.8 1000 0.3 3 0.3 3 0.3 2001.5 No need 0.2 1 0.2 1 0.2 Source: Karen Lu (2003) Qualification criteria include the types of business, operation term, business scale and operating performance. As for the types of business, the table above shows that the stock market only opening for bank, insurance company and fund management company in 1991, and in 1993, QFII eligibility extended to include securities companies. In 1995, foreign governments’ sovereign wealth funds and pension funds were permitted to enter into Taiwan stock market. In 1996, the qualifications extend to the mutual funds and investment trusts; also the introduction of GFII① scheme allowed non-resident individuals of Taiwanese origin or otherwise to invest in stock market in the same year. From above we can find that from adopting to abolishing of QFII scheme, Taiwan spent 10 years to make the dream come true, and we can find a clear path of stock market opening. The rigorous criteria on ① GFII: General Foreign Individual Investor is similar to Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor, but the scope of investors is bigger which include non-resident individuals of Taiwanese origin or otherwise. 13 investors’ qualifications can make sure QFIIs can act in the long-term benefits of Taiwan stock market. 3.3.2 Quota Restrictions Table 3-2: Changes of Investment Quotas for QFII (billion USD) 1991.2 1993 1994 1995 1996 1999 Quota limits for single QFII 0.005-0.05 0.05-0.1 (January) 0.05-0.2 (November) 0.05-0.2 0.05-0.4 (December) 0- 0.6 0-1.2 Quota limits for the whole QFII 2.5 5 (November) 7.5 (April) No restriction —— —— Source: CSRC, 2006 The purpose of setting the upper limits for QFII quota at the beginning is to adjust the investment scale to the overall economic development conditions, and make sure the whole economy can bear the impact of foreign investment. Then, after several years’ observation, the policy maker canceled the upper quota limits for the whole QFII, and all foreign institutional investors can invest in Taiwan unless they are not qualified. 3.3.3 Shareholding Restrictions Table 3-3: Changes of QFII Shareholding Limits Time 1991.1 Total shareholding percentages (<=%) Shareholding percentages of a single QFII (<=%) 10 5 1995.7 12 6 1995.9 15 7.5 1996.3 20 7.5 1996.11 25 10 1998.1 30 15 1999.3 2000.12 50 No Need (except for some special industries ) 50 No Need (except for some special industries ) Source: CSRC, 2006 The QFII shareholding limits build a ceiling for investors to invest in a certain company. This kind of restrictions can prevent foreign investors from controlling some important and special companies and disturbing the economic order. But with the strengthening of the 14 economy and in order to enhance the resource allocation ability of market, the limits of shareholding percentages relaxed gradually. Before 1999, a single QFII can only buy 15% of a listed company’s common stocks at most, and this shareholding cap made QFII sometimes cannot enter into listed companies’ board of directors and participate in corporate governance directly. 3.3.4 Investment Tools and Industries Restrictions Table 3-4: Investment Tools and Industries Restriction for QFII 1991.1 1992 1995 Less than 10% of capital can be invested in money market instrument. The money market instrument has an investment cap of 30% 1998 2000 QFII can invest in convertible bond and low-rating financial bond Investment tools restrictions 10% of capital must be invested in 3-month fixed time deposit Industries restrictions Investments in industries like agronomic horticulture, pesticide industry, transportation, telecommunication, postal savings and film and television have some special restrictions. Opening the index futures market to QFIIs Source: CSRC, 2006; Lin & Chen, 2006 The establishment of investment tools restrictions is to protect certain part of immature securities markets from the impact of foreign investment capital, and it is also a useful way to guide capital flow to somewhere it being needed. Moreover, it is noticeable that QFIIs can invest in Taiwan stock index futures market in 1998, which enables QFIIs to hedge their stock investment and lock-in market risks and this sort of risk avoidance mechanism prevent big turbulence in stock market. As for industries limitations, there are four types of industries which were restricted to invest by foreign capital by some laws and regulations of Taiwan. According to Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation, the four types of industries are follows: a) agronomic horticulture and pesticide industry which regulated by the Mineral Law and foreign investment in this industry cannot surpass 50% of the total tradable shares; b) on the basis of Article 2 of the Ship Law, the foreign investments cannot exceed 1/3 of the shipping company’s total tradable shares; c) the law of Highway totally forbids the foreign investors to invest in the 15 island transportation; d) the Regulations of Supervising Private Utilities Business set a ceiling for foreign funds that they cannot invest more than 49.99% of the utility company’s total trading shares (Lin & Chen, 2006). 3.3.5 The Restrictions for Inward and Outward Capital Remittance Table 3-5: Changes of QFII’s Capital Inward Remittance and Repatriation 1991.1 Restrictions QFII needs to remit the principal within 3 months after receiving the approval, and the principal need to stay in Taiwan for at least 3 months. The remittance and repatriation cannot exceed 4 times a year. 1996 1997 Lock-up period restriction for principal and capital gains is lifted. The QFII fund remittance which lower than 50 million US dollars do not need the approval of Taiwan Administration of Foreign Exchange. 2001 Extend the principal remittance term to 2 years. Source: CSRC, 2006 The remittance and repatriation restrictions can make sure the stability of exchange rates and exchange reserves, and also guarantee the foreign capital inflow and outflow would not disturb the formal economic order. 3.4 Stock Market Openness,Accessibility and Current Conditions Before deregulating the QFII program, whether Taiwan should remove it was hotly debated. The advocates think that the deregulation enable more and more participant enter into the domestic capital market to compete with each other, and fierce competition may lower the financing costs for Taiwan companies, in turn, promote the economic development. Just like what Bekaert and Harvey (1997) stated that the cost of capital always decreases after capital market liberalization. Nevertheless, others think that regulations should not be abolished, because not all of foreign institutional investors are “qualified”. If QFII scheme was removed, huge amount of hot money would flow into stock market and destabilize the 16 economic order, just like what happened in Thailand or Indonesia in 1997. Lin and Chen (2006) conducted the research through analyzing the returns of the highest and lowest 10 stocks in three certain industries which were held by QFIIs before and after the liberalization in Taiwan and found from their empirical research that a): the shares largely held by QFIIs tend to have better performance than those shares less held by QFIIs; b): the performance of QFII was better after deregulating the QFII system than the performance before liberalization. and this means the deregulation of QFII system do bring advantages to QFIIs and individual investors who pursue the investment decisions of QFIIs. At the end of 2001, Taiwan’s securities and futures commission approved 1,958 QFII applications in total, and the total quota reached at 230 billion USD. Until 2002, the shareholding of QFII took nearly 9.49% of the whole market capitalization, and became an important group in Taiwan stock market. In 2003, Taiwan announced to abolish the QFII scheme and realized the securities market liberalization. According to the Ernst & Young’s Annual report of globalization in 2010, in terms of factors like trade openness, capital mobility and others, Taiwan rank 12th in the world, and rank 3th in Asia, just below Hong Kong and Singapore (wenweipo, 2011). From this, it can be seen that Taiwan stock market become truly internationalized. All in all, we can find that in the long-run, the merits of capital account liberalization outweigh the demerits. When more and more foreign investors come into stock market, they will bring not only huge amount of capital, but also competition, advanced investment skills, behaviors and values which will benefit stock market and the entire economy in the long-run. Nevertheless, we also need to notice that Taiwan and Chinese Mainland are two different jurisdictions, therefore, when we learn from Taiwan’s experience, we cannot ignore our own special economic and social conditions. 17 Chapter IV: The Development of QFII Scheme in Chinese Mainland Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange were established in 26 th November 1990 and 1st December 1990 respectively and until now they have only the 23 years operation history. But the development pace of these two exchanges is quite rapid, and until now Shanghai Stock Exchange has 954 listed companies and the total market capitalization is RMB 15,665.21 billion, and Shenzhen Stock Exchange has 1538 listed companies, and RMB 7,589.41 billion in total market capitalization (SSE & SZSE, 2013). As for QFII scheme, Chinese Mainland introduced it a decade later than other emerging economies. The reasons are that, going back to the early 1990s, Chinese Mainland just beginning to set up special economic zones to open the international trade, the whole process of economic development is lagged behind for several decades. So, the time of introducing QFII scheme initiated 10 years later when many emerging markets like Taiwan or South Korea had already realized the securities market liberalization. However, the positive side of late opening is that we can learn from those predecessors and lower the risks of conducting financial reform. 4.1 Background and Reasons of Introducing QFII Scheme in Chinese Mainland The earliest attempt of opening the stock market to foreign investors can date back to 1991, in order to solve the problem of lacing the foreign exchange reserves and development funds, Chinese Mainland open the B-share① market which denominated in US dollars or Hong Kong dollars and only open to foreign investors. But for a long time, the trading volume is quite small and this market lacking liquidity, so, it is not too popular among foreign investors. Therefore, in 19th February 2001, Chinese Mainland permit to open B-share market to individual Chinese investors, and hope to boost this market. In 2001, after becoming an official member of WTO, according to its accession commitments to WTO, financial industries like commercial bank, securities market and ① B-share: B-shares are ordinary shares denominated in renminbi but traded in foreign currencies, and the price quotes and dividend payments are also in foreign currencies (US dollars for Shanghai B-shares, Hong Kong dollars for Shenzhen B-shares). 18 insurance companies need to open to foreign companies, so now it is common to see HSBC or Citibank in China. Moreover, as one of the WTO promises, foreign investors can invest in B-share directly and need agent no more, but obviously, the size of B-share is too small to meet the need of foreign investors. Like other emerging economies, the next step would be to open the capital market gradually. According to the statistics provided by the World Federation of Exchanges (2012), in terms of trading volume, Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange rank 4 th and 5th in the world respectively in the end of 2012. Chinese stock market is quite young but has grown at a fast speed. However, comparing with other well operated stock markets, there still exist several gaps for Chinese to narrow such as growing up in a relatively closed environment, highly regulated interest-rate and foreign-exchange rate, defective legal system and all of those stifle the internationalization of stock market. 4.1.1 Deformed Ownership Structure: Separation of Trading Shares and Non-trading Shares At the end of 2012, there are 953 listed companies are state-owned holding companies which means the state-owned capital is the majority comparing with other shareholders. And the number of this kind of companies consist 38.5% of all companies which listed in A-share① market, and in terms of market capitalization, stated-owned holding companies took 51.4% of total A-share market capitalization (Wang, 2013). Going back to 2006, a lot of state-owned listed companies had a large part of non-trading shares. At the highest peak, only one-third of the total stock issue is tradable shares, and the price of those shares does not reflect the real value of the companies. Therefore, the stock market cannot act as a good resources allocator, because a small number of tradable shares distort the real value of the company and also the attempt of business merger and acquisition would be very expensive. In May 2005, China initiated the reform of non-tradable shares, to correct the pricing mechanism which was distorted by large volume of non-trading shares. ① A-share: A-shares are ordinary shares denominated and traded in renminbi and the price quotes and dividend payments are also in renminbi. 19 4.1.2 Regulation of Interest-rate and Foreign Exchange-rate The sequence of opening up policy need to be carefully planned, otherwise, the whole economy would be negatively affected. Generally, the sequence of internationalization is international trade liberalization; interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate liberalization and then the securities market liberalization can be realized. Until now, because of the economic complexity and huge amount of foreign exchange reserves, interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate are still regulated by Chinese government. Thus, in short term, opening up the capital market completely is unpractical. 4.1.3 Defective Legal System and Regulatory System The regulatory framework of Chinese Mainland’s financial market was developed in a closed environment and commensurate with the development of socialist market economy, therefore, a lot of things are need to learn from other developed financial markets. Solely in the first half year of 2012, there were 96 insider trading cases according to CSRC’s report. If more international institutional investor enter into the Chinese Mainland’s stock market, a sound regulatory framework which compatible with international standards to regulate and supervise the capital market is highly needed. However, obviously, the establishment of a good regulatory framework needs time. 4.2 Evolution of Chinese Mainland’s QFII scheme There were three major easing changes in QFII Measures, as for “Provisional Measures on Administration of Domestic Securities Investments of Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors(QFII)” which came into effect on 1st December 2002, and then “Measures on Administration of Domestic Securities Investments by Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors” which came into effect on 1st September 2006, and the one close to writing this paper was “Administrative Measures for Securities Investments in China by Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors” which came into effect on 27th July 2012. And it can be seen that there was a clear pathway which passed by Chinese stock market liberalization. 20 4.2.1 The Changes of QFII Qualifications It can be seen from Table 4-1 that the qualification requirements for various investment entities had loosened constantly throughout this decade in terms of two important aspects: business operating years and lower limits of managed securities assets. The 2002’s Provisional Measures is quite strict compare with Taiwan’s initial Measures, the requirement of managed securities assets not less than US $10 billion screened many QFII quota competitors. In 2006, the Measures eased restrictions for long-term investors like insurance companies and fund management institutions; also allowed other institutions like pension funds or charitable funds to join in. In 2012, restrictions relaxed again for nearly all kinds of institutions, for instance, there are no ranking requirements for commercial banks any more, the securities assets needs declined to US$ 0.5 billion rather than the previous US$ 10 billion. Deregulation attempts to attract more small but capable foreign institutional investors to invest in Chinese Mainland’s stock markets. 4.2.2 Changes of Shareholding Cap The upper limits of holding one listed company’s outstanding shares by single QFII remain unchanged for a decade, however, the regulations of the upper limits for total shares of a company held by all QFIIs enlarged to 30% in 2012 from 20% in 2002. The shareholding capped at certain percentage is to prevent the QFII from controlling certain companies or industries, meanwhile, lowering the risks of manipulating share prices by QFIIs. Obviously, the bad side will be that QFII cannot participate in companies’ corporate governance process directly. 4.2.3 Changes of Restrictions on RMB Financial Instruments From the table 4-3, on the one hand, the investment scope became larger and larger, QFIIs have more choices to allocate their investment, like stock index futures which is permitted for QFII in 2012, and QFII can hedge their equity portfolio. On the other hand, it demonstrates that the space for financial innovations is very big, more derivative instruments can be introduced to boost the financial market. 21 Table 4-1: Changes of QFII Qualifications 2002 2006 2012 Commercial Banks Ranking among the top 100 of the world in the total assets for the most recent accounting year and managing securities assets of not less than US$10 billion. (Remain unchanged) Having operated commercial bank business for over 10 years with tier one capital not less than US $ 0.3 billion and managing securities assets no less than US$ 0.5 billion in the most recent accounting year; Insurance Companies Having operated insurance business for over 30 years with paid-in capital of not less than US$1 billion and managing securities assets of not less than US$10 billion in the most recent accounting year; Having operated insurance business for over 5 years and managing securities assets of not less than US$5 billion in the most recent accounting year; Securities Companies Having operated securities business for over 30 years with paid-in capital of not less than US$1 billion and managing securities assets of not less than US$10 billion in the most recent accounting year; (Remain unchanged) Having operated securities business for over 5 years with paid-in capital of not less than US$ 0.5 billion and managing securities assets of not less than US$ 5 billion in the most recent accounting year; Fund management institutions Having operated fund business for over 5 years with the most recent accounting year managing assets of not less than US$10 billion; Having operated Fund for over 5 years with the most recent accounting year managing assets of not less than US$5 billion; Having operated Fund for over 2 years with the most recent accounting year managing assets of not less than US$0.5 billion; Having operated for over 5 years with the most recent accounting year, managing securities assets of not less than US$5 billion; (Remain unchanged) Others (Pension funds, Sovereign wealth funds, etc. ) Not permitted. Source: CSRC. 22 Having operated insurance business for over 2 years and managing securities assets of not less than US$ 0.5 billion in the most recent accounting year; Table 4-2: Changes of Shareholding Cap 2002 2006 2012 Single QFII Shares held by each QFII in one listed company should not exceed 10% of total outstanding shares of the company; (Remain unchanged) (Remain unchanged) Total QFIIs Total shares held by all QFII in one listed company should not exceed 20% of total outstanding shares of the company. (Remain unchanged) Total shares held by all QFII in one listed company should not exceed 30% of total outstanding shares of the company. Source: CSRC Table 4-3: Changes of Restrictions on RMB Financial Instruments 2002 RMB Financial Instruments 1. Shares listed in China's stock exchanges 2. Treasuries listed in China's stock exchanges; 3. Convertible bonds and enterprise bonds listed in China's stock exchanges; 4. Other financial instruments as approved by CSRC. 2006 2012 1. Treasuries listed in China's stock exchanges, which including stares, bonds and warranties. 2. Securities investment funds 3. Convertible bonds and enterprise bonds listed in China's stock exchanges; 4. IPO shares, SEO shares, allotment shares. 5. Other financial instruments as approved by CSRC. 1. Treasuries listed in China's stock exchanges, which including stares, bonds and warranties. 2. The fixed income financial products which traded in the inter-bank bonds market. 3. Securities investment funds 4. Stock index futures 5. IPO shares, SEO shares, allotment shares. 6. Other financial instruments as approved by CSRC. Source: CSRC 4.2.4 The Changes of Restrictions for Inward and Outward Capital Remittance Remittance restrictions and lock-up period can make sure the foreign exchange-rate will not fluctuate violently in short-term and maintain the forex at a certain level. In order to maintain the nature of QFIIs’ capitals are long-term investments, SAFE sets up rigid 23 restrictions on inward and outward capital remittance. In 2002, the Provisional Measures formulated that after getting quotas QFIIs need to remit principal inward in 3 months, and the lock-up period is one year; and after the lock-up period, each outward remittance cannot exceed 20% of principal and two outward remittances cannot happen within 3 months. Then, in the Measures of 2006, in order to attract more long-term investments like pension funds, insurance funds, mutual funds, and others, it stated that the lock-up period for aforesaid three kinds of funds lower to 3 months. And pervious lock-up period restrictions did not change in 2012’s new Measures (CSRC). From 2002 to 2012, it is clear that all kinds of investment restrictions eased gradually, and the aim is to expend the size of QFII group and enable more and more institutional investors invest in. 4.3 Openness and Current Conditions of Chinese Mainland’s Stock Market 4.3.1 Outcomes of QFIIs’ Participation in Chinese Mainland’s Stock Market From the Figure 4-1 we can find that QFIIs had a positive capital gain in investing A-shares market. In 2006, the aggregated approved quota was 10 billion US dollars, but the total market capitalization held by QFIIs was 1.2 times larger than approved quotas. The performance of QFIIs in 2007 was much better, the total market capitalization increased dramatically to nearly 1.9 times of approved quota. The phenomenon of the market value exceed the approved quota means that the prices of shares they hold increased dramatically throughout those two years, and this great investment return can be partly thanks to the bull market in A-shares market between 2006 and 2007, meanwhile QFII’s excellent investment techniques cannot be ignored. 24 Figure 4-1 Source: China Capital Development Report by CSRC, 2008 4.3.2 Market Openness After becoming an official member of WTO, the financial sector of China become more and more open. The report of Xinhua-Dow Jones International Financial Centers Development Index can act as good indicator for market openness, which ranks 45 financial centers in terms of growth and development, industrial support, financial services and general environment and provides information for international investors to find better places to allocate their funds globally. In this report, there were five cities in China being selected, they are Hong Kong (4th), Shanghai (8th), Beijing (13th), Shenzhen (22th) , Taipei (41th) (IFCD, 2012). It can be seen that three financial centers in Chinese Mainland rank quite high, and show a great potential to become next powerful international financial centers. Moreover, according to the information of State Administration of Foreign Exchange (2013), at the end of 2012, there were 169 QFIIs received the total quota which worth US $37.4 billion, in the future, there will be more QFIIs in A-shares market. 4.3.3 Current Conditions Lack of effective market surveillance: financial markets always developed in an eye-catching speed, however, a sharp contrast is that Chinese regulators lack sound 25 market surveillance capabilities. For instance, some financial corporations in western countries tend to operate various businesses in a mixed way, which requires regulators to have higher capability on monitoring and regulating. However, in Chinese Mainland there are several regulatory bodies to regulate financial sector simultaneously, and the separation of regulation may cause many problems, for instance, the ambiguous division of duties and responsibilities between regulators may lead to supervision overlapping or regulatory vacuum and leave many loopholes for speculators to extract abnormal interests. According to the Interim Measures of QFII Domestic Securities Investment, CSRC responsible for screening QFIIs and their operations, and SAFE responsible for approving quota and principal inward and outward remittances. The initial purpose of this duty separation is to reinforce surveillance, but in reality, CSRC do not have quota approval authority, therefore, cannot regulate QFIIs who get quota but did not use it; on the other hand, SAFE sometimes cannot distribute the quota to the right QFIIs who really need it (CSRC, 2006). Therefore, regulators really need to communicate and coordinate more with each other to supervise the whole market in an efficient way (IOSCO, 2012). The efforts government put into market surveillance is that: China passed the amendments to the Securities Law in 2006, which was initially promulgated in 1999, aims to strengthen the investigations and sanctioning of market irregularities, reduce the investment risks and protect investors’ rights and interests (CSRC). Besides, the amendment to the Securities Law was an attempt to adjust new financial situations, and it lays a solid foundation for capital market liberalization. Lack of financial innovation: Another distinct feature in Chinese securities market is lacking financial innovation. A well-functioning stock market need to equip enough financial instruments for investors to diversify their investment portfolio and hedge their assets. However, until 2013, the only derivative instrument QFII can hedge their investment is stock index futures. Other more useful instruments like margin trading or short selling which is common in well developed stock markets cannot be invested by most investors in Chinese Mainland. In the future, introducing sound derivative products and hedging measurements are needed, and meanwhile effective supervisory mechanism is indispensable. 26 In 2013, as for total market capitalization, A-shares market is the biggest one among emerging economies, and possesses 2492 listed companies means Chinese stock markets have enough liquidity and vitality. But in terms of Domestic Market Capitalization as a percentage of GDP which is a crucial indicator for evaluating the importance of stock market in a country’s economy, Taiwan exceeded Chinese Mainland for around three times. From statistics we got from the World Federation of Exchanges, in 2010, the total domestic market capitalization of Shanghai and Shenzhen was US $4,027.84 billion (WFE, 2013), and the GDP of China in the same year is US $5,939.33 billion (NBSC, 2011), therefore, the ratio of two indicators is 67.8%. For America, the solely total domestic market capitalization of NASDAQ OMX and NYSE Euronext (US) is US $17,283.45 billion (WFE, 2013), and that year’s GDP of America is nearly US $15,000 billion, so, the proportion is 115%. Here we can see the gap. Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets are not as competent as those developed stock markets but the growth potential is immeasurable, for Chinese economy is big enough with huge numbers of listed companies. Figure 4-2: Market Capitalization of Several Emerging Economies’ Stock Markets Source: IOSCO survey data and World Bank (IOSCO, 2012). High turnover rate usually means too much individual investors involved in stock market trading which cause the stock prices fluctuate frequently. Chinese Mainland’s turnover rate reached nearly 170% in 2010, and was the highest among emerging economies. We can infer that the size of institutional investors is not big enough to influence the whole market. 27 Figure 4-3: Turnover Rate of Several Emerging Economies’ Stock Markets Source: IOSCO survey data and World Bank (IOSCO, 2012). In sum, in this chapter, the economic and financial background for introducing QFII scheme is analyzed and find that some preconditions of capital account liberalization such as interest-rate and foreign exchange rate liberalization in Chinese Mainland is not achieved before gradual capital account liberalization. Also, separation of trading-shares and non-trading shares is a distinct feature of Chinese Mainland stock market. Moreover, three Measures which related to the gradual QFII scheme deregulation are demonstrated, and find that there is a clear pathway for easing the investment restrictions. In the final part, we find that QFII is still a minority in A-shares market, and do not influence Chinese stock market that much, but the existence of QFII do help regulators enhance their market surveillance abilities and make the financial market better. Chapter V: Comparison of Taiwan and Chinese Mainland QFII scheme 5.1 Similarities and Differences in Introducing Background As for the introduction background of QFII scheme in Taiwan, there are two things worth to note, the first one is interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate liberalization, and the second one is industrial upgrading. Those two factors lay a solid foundation for smooth capital account liberalization. Interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate liberalization is important 28 because they are effective resources allocator in financial market, and after liberalization the pricing of financial asset can reflect real demand and supply of financial markets more effective. More importantly, Taiwan’s economic structure upgrade policies help the take-off of Taiwan’s electronic industries in the 1980s and transform traditional manufacturing industries to high technology industries successfully. For instance, in 1980, Hsinchu Science industries park was established, and later became the world third largest semiconductor production base with more than 440 high technology companies and annul turnover of new Taiwan $880 billion (Wang Hu, 2011). Furthermore, after the industries upgrading, the traditional manufacturing industries took only 15% of GDP instead of 45% before upgrading, however, machinery and electronics companies elevated from 20% to 40%. Even through the appreciation of new Taiwan dollar occurred later, the successful industries upgrading help to maintain the competitiveness of Taiwan’s international trade and make sure the continued growth in Taiwan domestic economy. During the take-off of Taiwan’s world renowned electronic industries, QFIIs’ investment helps a lot. QFII in Taiwan tends to buy shares of electronic companies, and shares hold by QFII in these four companies: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), United Microelectronics Corporation, Foxconn Group and ASUS took nearly 51% of QFII total shareholding value, which means every single QFII invest more than 50% of their money in those four high technology companies (CSRC, 2006). It can be seen that the long-term capital supply promote the development of Taiwan high technology industries. In 2003, Chinese Mainland just became a member of WTO for two years and began to liberalize the international trade. And Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets were established in 1990 and just traded for 13 years, many policies in those two exchanges had the shadow of planned economy, especially non-trading shares policy. Originally, in order to ensure the domination of state-owned economy, authorities designed a special equity ownership structure for those state-owned listed companies, that is, only a small proportion of companies’ shares are tradable and majority of shares are non-tradable. Later, it can be find that share prices are distorted by this tradable shares and non-trading shares separation policy. Therefore the introduction of QFII can be treated as an institutional 29 innovation and promote the development of Chinese stock market; also, QFII can help to inject more capital into stock market to increase the liquidity, and absorb extra non-trading shares which would be released by those state-owned listed companies. The capital account liberalization process need to be implemented in certain sequence, and it is crucial to bear in policymaker’s mind that fully open the capital account abruptly before building up a sound institutional system is highly danger. The sound institutional system includes strong market disciplines like good accounting practices, transparent legal system and powerful supervisory and regulatory system to prevent insider trading, corruption or other illegal conducts (Eichengreen & Mussa, 1998). Therefore, opening up gradually is a good choice for those developing countries to buy time for building up a sound institutional system to adjust rapid economic development. This is exactly what Taiwan and Chinese Mainland did by implementing QFII scheme. As for Taiwan, the interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate liberalization is achieved prior to stock market opening. But in Chinese Mainland, capital account liberalization accompanied with the gradual opening process of international trade, and the interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate are still controlled by the government. This special situation means the opening process of stock market in China will be longer and harder than Taiwan. 5.2 Similarities and Differences in Schemes Themselves From the introduction of QFII scheme in 1991 to the abolishing of it in 2003, Taiwan spent 12 years in total and became one of the successful international stock markets in the end. However, in Chinese Mainland, launched in 2002, QFII scheme has been implemented for 11 years, but seems like there is still a long way to go. In the first place, the investment restrictions which were written in the first Provisional Measures are stricter than Taiwan’s first QFII measures. As for qualifications, the requirement in Chinese Mainland is that the value of securities under managing shall not be less than US $10 billion for all kinds of institutional investors, but in Taiwan the restrictions is no less than US $0.3 or 0.5 billion, and we can see the big gap in qualification criteria. As for business operating years, insurance companies and securities companies need to 30 operate for over 30 years, but in Taiwan, just 10 years was required. In terms of inward and outward capital remittance, restrictions in Chinese Mainland were stricter than Taiwan. The lock-up period in Chinese Mainland was one year, and because of forex control, the capital remittance need to acquire the permission of SAFE, but in Taiwan the lock-up period was just three months. However, the common point is that both authorities in two jurisdictions adopt compulsory measures rather than flexible measures like taxation to regulate QFIIs. Chinese Mainland chose to implement very tight restrictions is not only to find long-term investment fund but also concern for the weak supervisory abilities of relevant regulators, but meanwhile, tight restrictions screen out many capable but small investment institutions. As for QFII information disclosure mechanism, Taiwan had a complete QFII information disclosure system and the public can get that information easily, but in Chinese Mainland, only regulators can have access to that information. In Taiwan, some trading information which related to QFII can be acquired through the website of Taiwan Stock Exchange. The public information including: 1) the oversold and overbought conditions of all QFIIs for a single company and all companies in the stock market; 2) shareholding conditions: how many shares of a listed company were held by QFIIs and the shareholding percentages in different industries which invested by the whole QFIIs. Taiwan stock exchange would renew those statistics daily, weekly and monthly, but not disclose each QFII’s trading details. In Chinese Mainland, the QFII information disclosure system is not established yet. From the website of CSRC, only the list of approved QFIIs and the list of QFII custodian banks are available. Shareholding conditions can only be acquired from listed companies’ annual report. Comparing with Taiwan, Chinese Mainland’s QFII information disclosure is lacking transparency. Moreover, according to the research of CSRC (2006), Taiwan eased regulations frequently and in a fast pace from 1991 to 2003. Taiwan changed investment quota restrictions thirteen times, changed shareholding restrictions eight times, changed capital inflow and outflow regulations nine times and investment fields eight times throughout those 12 years. Every change is a fine tuning, but the total changes make a difference. As for Chinese Mainland, the QFII domestic investment measures only changed three times, seems like 31 the road for deregulation is still very long. 5.3 Similarities and Differences in Effects of QFII Schemes on Stock Markets Generally speaking, the introduction of QFII system can influence several aspects of stock market such as liquidity injection, investor structure optimization, brining rational investment philosophies, improving listed companies’ corporate governance and promoting institutional innovation, and others. However, one thing clear is that economic environment is crucial and same policies implemented in different environment may cause different outcomes. 5.3.1 Liquidity Injection QFII helps to inject huge amount of long-term capitals into stock markets and listed companies. From the Figure 5-1, we can compare the net QFII capital inflow in Taiwan and Chinese Mainland and started from the year introduced QFII schemes in these two jurisdictions. In the first two years, net capital inflow in Chinese Mainland was higher than Taiwan. Then, from year 3 to year 6, net capital inflow in Taiwan maintained at US $2 billion, while, in China, the net capital inflow fluctuate because of quota restrictions and forex control. In year 7, Taiwan experienced Asia financial crisis in 1997, the QFII capital became net outflow in that year. But after year 9, there was a great surge in net capital inflow in Taiwan, because Taiwan relaxed the restrictions again in 1999 and MSCI decide to elevate the weight of Taiwan index from 50% to 100%, which enabled a large volume of international capital flow into Taiwan. The great surge happened in Chinese Mainland in year 10, when CSRC introduced a new QFII investment Measures and relaxed restrictions further, and also western countries formulated quantitative easing policies in the same year, those two factors made the net capital inflow reached the highest peak. Thus, through comparing, even through the amount of capital inflow is different but the overall upward trend is quite similar: net capital inflow increased gradually as government eased regulations on a step by step basis. 32 Figure 5-1 Net QFII capital inflow comparison 10 billion $ 8 6 Net capital inflow in Taiwan Net capital inflow in Chinese Mainland 4 2 0 -2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Time series,T=1 means the year introduced QFII scheme(Taiwan in 1991, Chinese Mainland in 2003) Source: SAFE and Taiwan Stock Exchange (Qibin & Ba Shusong, 2003). 5.3.2 Investor Structure Optimization and Promoting Rational Investment Philosophies The presence of QFIIs in the A-shares market can expand the group size of institutional investors. Actually, a mature stock market need to be dominated by institutional investors rather than individual investors, because institutional investors have richer investment experience in international markets, and they favor value investment and tend to hold their equity portfolio in a long-term basis. Moreover, foreign institutional investors have professional financial knowledge in acquiring and analyzing huge volume of information and then reacting timely to buy low and sell high. Therefore, this asymmetric ability can lead to the herd behavior among individual investors, that is to say, individual investors tend to mimic the trading behavior of those institutional investors, especially those more capable QFIIs (Lin & Chen, 2006). In other words, the presence of institutional investors not only optimize the investors’ structures but also change individual investors’ investment behaviors and made them to invest rationally. From the Figure 5-2, it can be seen that the proportion of foreign institutional investors in terms of trading volume is 18% in Chinese Taipei which is equal to the average ratio, however, QFII only contribute 1% of trading volume in Chinese mainland. For the proportion of domestic institutional investors, Chinese Taipei and Mainland are quite same, 14% and 13% respectively. But, generally, the individual investors still took a large part of 33 annual stock trading volume in Chinese Mainland, because of rigid restrictions, QFII cannot change Chinese stock market’s individual investor dominated structure in short-term. Figure 5-2: Share of Annual Stock Trading Volume in 2010 Source: IOSCO survey data. From the chart, in Taiwan, we can find that domestic individual investors took a large part of total trading value in Taiwan stock market at the time introducing QFII program. Then, with the gradual easing of the QFII scheme, both foreign and domestic institutional investors increased steadily and squeeze the percentages of individual investors. At the end of QFII scheme, foreign institutional investors took nearly 5.9% of total investors in Taiwan stock market. We can find that QFII do optimize the investor structure for Taiwan stock market. Figure 5-3 Source: Tan Xiaofen. (2003) 34 5.3.3 Improving Listed Companies’ Corporate Governance QFIIs in emerging markets favor the companies which have a reasonable corporate governance structure and a good record information disclosure history, because as freshmen in a new investment environment they need to adjust for a while and invest in companies with good corporate governance and real investment potentials to lower risks they may exposure. Therefore, those companies which want to get the long-term capital injection would release more about themselves to show the real value and real potentials to attract the attentions of QFII. The positive side will be that those listed companies through sufficient information disclosure can get more long-term lower cost operating capital from QFIIs. Finally, this can facilitate to cultivate a virtuous circle to improve the whole environment of stock markets. In Taiwan, because the shareholding cap was eased gradually, except some special industries, QFII can buy more than 50% of a company’s common shares, therefore, QFII can enter into some companies’ board of directors, and influence companies’ corporate governance directly. However, in Chinese Mainland, the shareholding cap for single QFII is 10%, thus, QFII can only influence corporate governance of listed companies indirectly. 5.3.4 Promoting Institutional Innovation Actually, there are so many restrictions for foreign investors at the time introducing QFII scheme, and the size of fund determined that the impact of QFIIs to the whole stock market is quite small. Therefore, the significance of this kind of scheme is to promote institutional creativity at the very beginning. Also, emerging economies’ stock markets are immature at first, and immature means uncertainty and risk for foreign investors, so QFII tend to wait and take some researches before entering into those markets. So, that is a reason why there were few investors applied for quotas at the time introduced QFII program. What is more, another important point of this scheme is that QFII may push the local authorities to enhance their market monitoring abilities to meet international standards. A developed stock market is supervised by an experienced regulatory team rather than ruling 35 by many restrictions. The presence of QFII may teach regulators how to supervise international investors and improve their regulatory skills. Also, in a mature stock market, a lot of investment instruments can be invested which comprise various financial derivatives for investors to hedge their investments. The introducing of foreign investors can force regulators to develop innovative investment instruments to modernize stock market. As for Chinese Mainland’s stock market, there were many financial innovation reforms in the past ten years. In 2005, non-tradable shares reform made huge volume of shares injected into stock market and enabled the share prices reflect the real value of company. Moreover, in 2010, margin trading was experimented among several securities companies, and also the Hushen-300 index futures as the first financial futures product launched in the same year in Chinese Mainland. In Taiwan, the increasing number of QFIIs also forced local authorities to innovate. In 21st July 1998, Taiwan futures exchange launched Taiwan’s weighted index futures. One year later, in 1999, Taiwan introduced electronic companies’ stock index futures and financial companies’ stock index futures because shares of those two kinds of companies are largely held by QFII (Chen, 2007). Thereafter, other financial futures and options introduced in a fast speed, and those new investment instruments do make stock market become more active. 5.3.5 Stabilizing Stock Market Firstly, the existence of QFII strengthen the stability and reduce the volatility of stock market, for they emphasizing more on long-term investment, and they do not trade shares in large volume frequently. For example, during 1997 Asia Financial Crisis, a lot of QFIIs stick to long-term investment strategies and did not disturb the market through aggressive moves, and help Taiwan went through difficulties. Moreover, through observing the changes of turnover rate in Taiwan stock market, we can find that there is a downward trend for turnover rate after introducing QFII scheme. It is clear from Figure 5-4 that the turnover rate reached over 500% at 1990 and then because of the existence of QFIIs, the turnover rate appeared a downward trend through observing the 5-year moving averages’ line. 36 Figure 5-4: The Changes of Turnover Rate in Taiwan Stock Market Source: Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Commission (Qibin & Ba Shusong, 2003). 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 Shanghai Shenzhen 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 % Figure 5-5: The Changes of Turnover Rate in Chinese Mainland Stock Market years Source: 2012 Statistical Annual of Chinese Securities and Futures Market (CSRC, 2013) In Chinese Mainland, QFII only took 1% of Chinese stock market, so the influence of institutional investor is quite small. From the Figure 5-5, we can find that comparing with Taiwan, the turnover rate did not show a downward trend after introducing QFII scheme, instead that the turnover rate peaked at 900% in Shanghai and Shenzhen in 2007. Also, in terms of fluctuation range, obviously, the turnover rate wave more violent than Taiwan, which means individual investors are still main stream in Chinese stock market. There is downward trend for turnover rate after 2009, one explainable reason is that bear market lock up retail investors’ money and they are waiting for the next stock market boom. 37 5.3.6 Lowering the PE ratio of Listed Companies. When Taiwan implements the QFII scheme and promote the capital internalization, the PE ratios of Taiwan stock market became lower and lower, for the increasing of earnings per share. The reason behind it is that the QFIIs invest more in high growth potential high-tech companies, and the long-term capital supply enable the companies implement the best long-term strategies which eventually result in better business operation and earning more profits. From Figure 5-6, in October 1995, Taiwan’s PE ratio was the highest among four stock markets, but after 2003, the PE ratios of four stock markets are almost stood at the same level. This means Taiwan stock market becomes more mature after choosing opening up the capital account. Figure 5-6① Source: Citic Securities Research Institute, QFII and Internationalization of Taiwan Stock Market (2004) (Hou Peipei, 2009). ① TWSE stands for Taiwan Stock Exchange weighted index. SPX stands for Standard &Poor's 500 index. HSI stands for Hong Kong Hang Seng Index. SX5P stands for Dow Jones STOXX 50 index. 38 Figure 5-7: Changes of PE Ratio in Chinese Mainland’s Stock Markets Source: 2012 statistical annual of Chinese securities and futures market (CSRC, 2013) From Figure 5-7, similar with the fluctuation of turnover rate, the PE ratio also waved violently after the time introduced QFII scheme. Especially in 2007, PE ratio peaked at 60 in Shanghai and 70 in Shenzhen, and it shows an irrational equity investment behavior among individual investors. Comparing with Taiwan where PE ratio stood at 20 after 2003, Chinese Mainland’ s stock markets’ PE ratio was still too high even through there was a downward trend after 2009, and obviously, it was not the contribution of QFII and largely thanks to the bear market. In the future, if the group of QFII become large enough to affect the whole A-share market, PE ratio will go down to a reasonable level. 5.3.7 Improving the Correlation with Other International Markets International stock markets usually go ups and downs simultaneously around the world, and this phenomenon often stands for the strong correlations between those markets. According to the research of Pan Wenrong (2010), the correlation between Chinese stock markets and other international stock markets shows an upward trend after introducing the QFII program. Also, Chinese stock market began to show exogeneity,that is to say, the changes of other international markets may have a small effect on Chinese stock market. So, it can be predicted that the impact will be larger when the capital market become more internationalized. But because the capital account control is still too tight, A-share stock index still cannot enter into international indices like MSCI or FTSE. 39 In Taiwan, the progress of securities market internationalization closely accompanied with the process of deregulation. In 1996, when Taiwan relaxed the QFII restrictions again, Morgan Stanley Capital International Index (MSCI) decided to include Taiwan stock index into its indices and Financial Times and Stock Exchange Index (FTSE) did the same thing in 2000. This can be viewed as a cornerstone for the internationalization process of a emerging market. This is an important turning point for Taiwan stock market because a lot of institutional investors around world would refer to those international indices to allocate their assets globally. In America, nearly 90% of institutional investors invest passively according to those indices. If one market does not included in those indices, it is difficult to pool a lot of money. In addition, the related researches find that the Taiwan stock market has weak correlation with other international markets at the beginning period of QFII implementation, but in 2001, the correlation coefficient between Taiwan and New York stock exchange became 0.682, and between London stock exchange was 0.785, which means Taiwan stock market had more positive correlations with other markets(Lu, Xiaozhen, 2006). All in all, QFII scheme influences Taiwan and Chinese Mainland in various aspects, and shape stock markets in a positive way. At the end of QFII scheme, foreign institutional investors took nearly 5.9% of total stock market investors and made Taiwan stock market more mature and international. In China, QFII took only 1% of total stock market investors, but the influence of QFII on the stock markets will be larger and larger with the gradual easing of relevant regulations. Chapter VI: Conclusion From Taiwan’s experience Chinese Mainland can learn a lot. Many details in Chinese Mainland’s Measures on Administration of Domestic Securities Investments of QFII are learned from Taiwan. However, as the second largest economies in world, the opening pace of capital market cannot be as fast as Taiwan, because the macroeconomic conditions 40 like the size of foreign exchange reserves, the regulations of interest-rate and foreign exchange-rate, and exchange controls are all different between Taiwan and Chinese Mainland. In the process of Taiwan capital account liberalization, there are two important things: foreign exchange rate liberalization and industry upgrading contribute a lot. Even through after the foreign exchange rate liberalization, huge amount of capital flow inward Taiwan and appreciate new Taiwan dollars but the export did not hurt much, because high value-added products like high technology electronic devices and equipments took a large part of its exportation value, and positive effects of financial reform outweigh negative effects. In Chinese Mainland, these two factors: foreign exchange rate liberalization and industrial upgrading also determinate the pace of capital account liberalization. As for export, labor-intensive and low value-added products still take a large part, sometimes; lower price is the only thing China can compete with other countries. However, in those years, the pressure on renminbi appreciation become more and more big, and quick renminbi appreciation lead the price advantage products and high price elasticity products loss their competitions in the world. Therefore, the foreign exchange-rate is still need to control to lower the speed of renminbi appreciation and protect the export. Nonetheless, changing the way of exportation growth depends on the restructuring of the whole economy and industry upgrading which need long-term efforts input and cannot be achieved in just several years. As for industrial upgrading, merely technology development is not enough, instead that establishing a new business environment is needed. In China, starting a new business is harder than other countries, for one thing, the government always set tight restrictions on companies and levy various taxes and extra charges to put huge burdens on small and medium sized companies’ shoulders; for another, the financing channels are limited, so many excellent small and medium sized companies in Chinese Mainland are eliminated from the market because they cannot borrow enough money to develop. The whole society is depend too much on indirect financing like bank loan and the direct financing channel like growth enterprise stock market is still far away from many small and medium sized companies. From this perspective, the ineffective financial system 41 make the industrial upgrading developed at a slow pace and the immature stock market did not help real economy too much. Therefore, in short-term, the growth of Chinese economy is still largely depending on exportation, and Chinese government need to buy time for domestic economic restructuring through foreign exchange-rate control. However, foreign exchange-rate control itself is not a good long-term policy to stick to, because the renminbi is highly undervalued, and the huge foreign exchange reserves can show that the demand for renminbi is really big. In this situation, People’s Bank of China would use quantitive easing to cope with the stress of renminbi appreciation but at cost of inflation. In the long-run, if too much money was printed, the whole financial system may collapse. Actually, if the capital account liberalizes more and the quota of QFII increased for over nine or ten times, the complete flotation of foreign exchange-rate is inevitable, otherwise, the whole economy will be damaged. Actually, the capital account liberalization itself is unavoidable, since hot money can flow inward and outward China through overpricing and underpricing in international trade. Therefore, after conducting research into Chinese Mainland and Taiwan QFII scheme, two results can be concluded: a) the capital account liberalization will be realized and QFII scheme in Chinese Mainland will be deregulated and abolished in the future, and Chinese stock market will become more and more mature after more QFIIs invest in Chinese stock market; b) the speed of capital account liberalization will not be as quick as Taiwan, because opening the capital account is to help the development of real economy, so, taking the whole macroeconomic conditions into consideration is needed when implementing some policies. In Chinese Mainland, those two macroeconomic factors are foreign exchange-rate liberalization and industrial upgrading. Fully capital account liberalization can be achieved after achieving foreign exchange-rate liberalization and successful industrial upgrading. All in all, Chinese Mainland learns a lot from Taiwan’s QFII measures, but for two QFII programs implemented in different macroeconomic environment, it is unpractical for Chinese Mainland to open the stock market as quick as Taiwan, because the whole fragile 42 economy and financial system in Chinese Mainland did not ready for the complete opening of capital account. 6.1 Limitations of Study One limitation is that this thesis concludes the deregulation process of Chinese Mainland’s QFII scheme will be longer than Taiwan, and mainly depend on two factors: foreign exchange rate liberalization and industrial upgrading, but thesis does not research deeply into those two factors and giving the exact timetable of capital account liberalization. Thus, further studies can be done in predicting the timetable of capital account liberalization through researching into those two factors. Another limitation is that this thesis is mainly using secondary data and other people’s researches results to support arguments. Also, too much outdated statistics are used in this thesis, and some of them can be renewed if latest database is available. 43 References 1. Lin, A. and Chen, C.Y. (2006), “The Impact of Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors on Taiwan’s Stock Market”, Web Journal of Chinese Management Review, vol. 9, pp. 1-27. 2. Lu, K. (2003), “An Overview of the Taiwanese Qulified Foreign Institutional Investor System”, Bank for International Settlements papers, Vol. 15, pp. 141-151. 3. Henry, P.B. (2000), “Stock Market Liberalization, Economic Reform, and Emerging Market Equity Prices”, The Journal of Finance, Vol.55 No. 2, pp. 529-564. 4. … … …… 8. Richard, A.B., Stewart, C.M. and Franklin, A. (2009), Principles of Corporate Finance, Dongbei University of Finance & Economics Press, Dalian. 9. McKinnon, R.I. (2006), Money and Capital in Economic Development, China Finance Publishing House, Beijing. 10. … … …… 15. 谭小芬, “QFII 制度的市场影响与证券市场制度变迁”, 《金融教学与研究》,2003年,总 第88期。Tan, X.F. (2003), “The Effects of QFII Scheme on Stock Market and its Institutional Changes”, Finance Teaching and Research, Vol. 88, pp. 28-31. 16. … … …… 21. 刘树军,《QFII 进入中国指引》,中国金融出版社,2003 年,第一版。Liu, S.J. (2003), The Guidance of QFII Enters into China, China Finance Publishing House, Beijing. 22. … … …… 44 Appendixes [If your project includes appendixes, please write them here.] 45 (封底) 指导教师评语 Comments of Supervisor 建议评定成绩 Suggested thesis score by supervisor:________________ 指导教师签字 Signature of Supervisor:___________________ 学院答辩机构意见 日期 Date:______________________ Comments of Institute Oral Defense Committee 答辩组编号 No.______ Defense Group 答辩组主席签字 Signature of Chairman, Defense Group_________________ 日期 Date_____________ 46