In this article, we analyse investment preferences of domestic and foreign institutional investors to the management quality of Chinese listed firms. We find that foreign institutional investors hold higher shareholding in firms with greater numbers of executive officers with MBA degrees, having served as vice president or higher prior to joining the firm and sitting on multiple boards. Foreign institutional investors in China also show preference over investee firms with larger board size. However, they pay no attention to whether directors are independent from the firm management and meet often. Domestic institutional investors show preference to all management quality indicators that are associated with foreign institutional ownership. In addition, domestic institutional investors invest more in firms where the executive officers are certified public accountants (CPA) and are longer tenured in their current position. Furthermore, domestic institutional investors pay more attention to corporate governance of investee firms than foreign institutional investors. Finally, we find that domestic institutional investors show a strong preference to firms that have been invested by at least one Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII), even after controlling for QFII’s preference for management quality. This indicates that the QFIIs’ international reputation has been used by domestic institutional investors as a positive signal for investment opportunities.

QFII在A股市场将近10年的投资实践为其提供了必要的绩效评价前提，而国内文献主要基于水平的视角、通过对国内投资同行（尤其是基金）的交易行为和投资对象（上市公司）的内外治理影响进行总量研究。在概念准备和指标选择的基础上，构建了考察其垂直分层绩效的理论框架，并且根据沪深A股市场的指数收益率变化，实证计量了依次推进的三个层次，以推进QFII评价的理论与实践，供A股市场的进一步开放规制参考。结论为负的一定的审批政策效应、正的微弱的资金数量效应和负的比较显著的策略溢出效应，据此给出了适度加大QFII的资金审批额度、恰当改进股票投资税收政策和完善信息披露机制的监管改进建议。

Stock market liberalization is a decision to allow foreign investors to purchase domestic shares. This paper is an event study on market reactions around the announcement of the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) scheme in China. We find no significant abnormal returns in market indices in the short-term period leading up to the announcement, negative abnormal returns in the short-term period following the announcement, and no significant abnormal returns in the long-term period thereafter. The findings do not comply with the prediction of international asset pricing models. The QFII scheme may not help much in reducing the cost of equity capital and risk premium of China companies.