ABSTRACT
The chapter charts the takeoff of the offshore renminbi market in Hong Kong, the first and the world’s largest to date, and the associated liberalizing initiatives since the mid-2000s that constituted the solid market and policy foundation of renminbi internationalization. It shows how the Hong Kong government and offshore financial interests were indispensable to the advancing of policy agendas and how they engaged in extensive bargaining with other policy actors. Their successful political maneuverings expanded the basis of support beyond the offshore community and China’s central bank, and resulted in a sustaining of the original liberalizing impulse.
