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By CCTV correspondent Laura Luo

China's first RMB Qualified¹ Foreign Institutional Investor² or RQFII exchange traded fund was launched at the London Stock Exchange on Thursday. Just how important is its launch for European investors³ to access China's domestic market.

Investors across Europe are now able to invest into China's A share market, through the first RQFII exchange traded fund. The ETF for Renminbi qualified foreign institutional investors was jointly⁴ launched by Chinese asset management firm CSOP and London-based company Source on Thursday. The fund will track 50 best performing companies in the Chinese mainland.

"So the allocation for the RQFII scheme is 80 billion RMB. So this one is the, after Hong Kong and Singapore, definitely the first city of the Europe grant for this RQFII scheme quota⁵. So Europe became, London is the first one," Jessie Pak, Managing Director for Asia of Financial Times & Stock Exchange, says.

The 80 billion yuan Pak mentioned was the initial yuan investment quota China agreed to grant to the UK back in October 2013. The launch of the ETF is seen to strengthen London's position as a centre for offshore⁶ RMB transaction.

"So I think that actually is very important for the European market, because the RQFII scheme provide very good equity⁷, so we will see that will further strengthen the London Source exchange and also the UK market," Pak says.

CSOP has a 30 billion yuan, or 5 billion USD worth of RQFII quota. The new EFT will be traded in dollars and pounds, but settled in yuan. The fund has already received subscriptions⁸ totalling 230 million US dollars.