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Aileen Chuang

China’s yuan is gaining traction as a go-to fundraising currency for companies expanding overseas, bolstered by favourable conditions, including a larger central-bank quota that offers cheaper, stable funding in Hong Kong, according to market participants.
The mainland currency’s renewed momentum comes amid its recent appreciation, a broader shift away from US assets and the decision by Beijing and Hong Kong authorities to double the RMB Business Facility (RBF) to 200 billion yuan (US$28.8 billion), effective Monday.
Launched in October, the scheme was expanded in December to cover more banks and their overseas entities, and to extend eligible uses from trade finance to capital expenditure and working capital. Companies can secure yuan funds from 40 participating banks at onshore interest rates, which are roughly half those in Hong Kong dollars.
The higher quota and expanded scope underscore a broader trend: both Chinese and international companies are increasingly using the yuan for loans and bonds, bolstering Beijing’s drive to internationalise the currency since the 2008 financial crisis.
“Yuan financing is expanding as clients increasingly choose it for lower costs,” said Adaline Zheng, CEO of UOB Hong Kong. “Foreign-exchange trends, interest-rate shifts and supply-chain reshaping are all driving greater offshore yuan use.”
She said more companies in China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) were using the yuan for cross-border trade and financing. Since 2023, UOB’s cross-border yuan payments and trade settlement flows had doubled, marking growing structural demand from clients across supply chains, key trade corridors and investment activities, she added.
The yuan’s appreciation against the US dollar, at around 4 per cent since last year, had further influenced overseas suppliers’ payment preferences, said Frank Fang, head of commercial banking for Hong Kong and Macau at HSBC.
The yuan was the second most-used currency in global trade finance, accounting for 8.3 per cent of the activity on the Swift network as of December, according to Swift data. “This demonstrates not only a diversification in how international trade is financed but also a growing preference for settling transactions in yuan,” Fang said.

The use of yuan loans had broadened to include working capital and capex, supported by Hong Kong’s RBF, bankers said.
“Hong Kong is an international financing centre and a treasury hub where not only short-term working capital but also longer-tenor and project-level financing takes place,” Zheng said. “The RBF is helpful by extending liquidity support for tenor-mixed transactions.”
“As the enhanced RBF now covers corporate clients of the participating banks’ overseas intragroup banking entities, it helps channel offshore yuan funds to other regions such as the Asean,” said Jerry Zhang, head of coverage for Greater China and North Asia for corporate and investment banking at Standard Chartered. In December, the bank channelled offshore yuan liquidity from Hong Kong to Singapore to support a mainland Chinese company’s Singapore subsidiary.
“The renminbi has become a key component of Hong Kong’s syndicated loan market,” said Maggie Lo, partner at law firm Clifford Chance. “In most sizeable deals today, a renminbi tranche is almost expected, whereas just a few years ago, Hong Kong or US dollars were the norm.”
Outstanding commercial bank loans in yuan to offshore borrowers reached 2 trillion yuan as of the end of 2024, an increase of 14 per cent from a year earlier, according to data from the People’s Bank of China.
Meanwhile, offshore yuan-denominated bonds, known as dim sum bonds, reached record volume in 2025, driven by Chinese technology firms and foreign issuers such as the government of Indonesia, Swiss food and beverage giant Nestle and global insurer Chubb.
Non-Chinese issuers in the offshore yuan bond market grew from around 3 per cent to 8 per cent last year, according to Rich Chun, head of Asia-Pacific at Tradeweb, an electronic trading platform operator.
For Chinese investors, putting yuan to work by investing in fixed income was better than leaving it in a savings account, while foreign investors could gain upside despite yuan bonds potentially paying less with lower interest rates, Chun said. “It’s not just a yield play, but also a currency diversification as well as a currency appreciation,” he said.
“We need to strengthen the yuan’s holding power,” said UOB’s Zheng. Cheaper funding had boosted borrowing, but genuine internationalisation required much wider use of the yuan in deposits, payments and everyday transactions, she said. “The next step is to create more real‑world scenarios and wealth products that make holding yuan as attractive as borrowing it.”
Angela Chan, another partner at Clifford Chance, said that from an investment and business strategy perspective, companies that were focused on the Chinese economy created yuan funding needs. Naturally, such companies turned to Hong Kong’s financial markets, she added.
“The ecosystem has become aligned,” she said, adding that business needs driven by investment or expansion in China, strong investor demand and policy initiatives amid global geopolitical shifts were “all creating favourable conditions for another wave of renminbi internationalisation”.


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Uses of yuan borrowing broaden to include working capital and capex, supported by Hong Kong’s liquidity boost, bankers say


Uses of yuan borrowing broaden to include working capital and capex, supported by Hong Kong’s liquidity boost, bankers say.


Yuan finds footing in corporate finance, bolstering Beijing’s internationalisation push

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Uses of yuan borrowing broaden to include working capital and capex, supported by Hong Kong’s liquidity boost, bankers say

Uses of yuan borrowing broaden to include working capital and capex, supported by Hong Kong’s liquidity boost, bankers say