The wild American West of the late 19th century was once an arena for thousands of independent railroad companies. Every newly laid track carried the legends of adventurers and fantasies of immense profits, with every station potentially birthing a new wealth myth.
However, this chaotic competition eventually converged into a few standardized trunk lines, as fragmented networks underwent consolidation by giants reminiscent of the Morgan financial consortium.
When railroads transitioned from tools of adventure into the vital arteries of the national economy, the once-dominant independent railroad tycoons vanished, replaced by more efficient, colossal, yet complex "infrastructure operators."
In the third trading week of 2026, China's public fund industry appears to be experiencing a similar pivotal moment.
On January 12th, a historic milestone was reached in China's public fund industry as China Asset Management became the first institution to see its ETF assets surpass the trillion-yuan mark, reaching a colossal 1,015.85 billion yuan. Close on its heels, E Fund Management maintained a formidable presence with assets of 924.32 billion yuan, a gap of less than 100 billion yuan.
Combined, these two giants control nearly 2 trillion yuan in ETF assets, commanding over one-third of the entire market's ETF share.
China AMC and E Fund achieving, or nearing, the "single-firm trillion" scale signifies that the passive assets under a top public fund manager now overwhelmingly surpass the total active assets of most peers. This marks a rapid paradigm shift for the long-held business model, built on the tenets of active investment and value discovery, during a period of stock-based competition.
This serves as a footnote to the industry's transformation from a "craft-based" endeavor into a "heavy industry."
As the迷信 surrounding Alpha recedes and fee wars compress profits to the floor, trillion-yuan ETFs are no longer mere investment tools; they are morphing into a secondary layer of "infrastructure" built upon the exchange itself.
In this winter of oligopoly establishment, the iron curtain of the giants has descended, yet the final chapter of the industry's evolution may have just begun.
If one zooms out, it becomes evident that the accumulation of a single firm's trillion-yuan assets was not a result of linear, organic growth, but rather a classic case of "pulse-style" forced maturation.
The foundation of this trillion-yuan edifice was not built brick by brick by retail investors, but poured by a combination of macro-level policy will and heavy institutional positioning.
Taking China AMC's ETF's epoch-making growth as an example, its scale climbed from less than 190 billion yuan at the end of 2020 to over one trillion yuan by early 2026, achieving a staggering annual compound growth rate nearing 40%. However, the decisive leap occurred during the market downturn from 2023 to 2024.
During these two years, China AMC's ETF scale surged by 63.9%, with annual increments measured in hundreds of billions. E Fund demonstrated an even steeper growth trajectory, starting from less than 80 billion yuan in 2020 and achieving a more than tenfold increase over roughly five years.
The core driver behind this was the dramatic transformation of the A-share market during the same period.
Amid the increased volatility of the 2023-2024 cycle, national team funds like Huijin made substantial purchases of broad-based ETFs to support the market. China AMC, with its first-mover advantage and massive liquidity capacity thanks to flagship products like the SSE 50 and CSI 300 ETFs, became the primary beneficiary.
When these entrusted funds, aimed not at short-term trading but at acting as long-term market stabilizers, remained invested, they formed the most solid, policy-driven core holdings within these managers' trillion-yuan scales.
During this period, the behavior patterns of institutional investors also underwent a fundamental reversal.
Institutional funds, represented by wealth management subsidiaries and insurance capital, battered by successive blows from narrowing net interest margins, fee-based losses, and an asset shortage, began to recognize the high difficulty of capturing Alpha from active products. Furthermore, potential style drift and performance consistency issues proved challenging to mitigate through due diligence.
Consequently, capital began a massive migration from active equity funds towards ETFs.
This "allocational shift" by institutional funds fundamentally altered the ownership structure of ETFs.
ETFs ceased to be merely instruments for arbitrage strategies or speculative trading capital; they became the heaviest-weighted suppliers in the asset allocation chain.
In a sense, the achievement of the single-firm trillion-yuan phenomenon today is not the natural outcome of market logic, but a victory for "utility attributes."
The players with the most comprehensive broad-based product lines naturally gained the largest interfaces for connecting with sovereign-level liquidity and institutional allocation flows.
While both have reached the trillion-yuan ETF league, China AMC and E Fund appear to exhibit two distinctly different strategies. If the former's strength lies in the depth of its on-exchange market making, the latter is quietly accumulating potential through omnichannel penetration.
China AMC's "large and comprehensive" dominance stems from its product structure, where its Top 10 products account for nearly 80% of its total scale, with a relatively balanced distribution.
From the SSE 50 and CSI 300, to the STAR 50, CSI A500, and even the Hang Seng Tech Index, China AMC has established flagship products in every core broad-based sector, each reaching or approaching the hundred-billion-yuan scale.
This layout strongly resembles an end-game mindset focused on underlying assets. It does not gamble on the success of any particular style but strives to become the "liquidity bedrock" for the entire market.
This无形中构建的是一个"全天候防御场", effectively creating an "all-weather defensive field." Regardless of whether market winds favor large-cap value or small-cap growth, or whether capital flows to A-shares or Hong Kong stocks, China AMC possesses a corresponding, highly liquid vessel to accommodate it.
In contrast, the super product CSI 300 ETF became the decisive factor for E Fund's breakthrough to the trillion-yuan scale. E Fund's CSI 300 ETF alone, surpassing the 300-billion-yuan mark, contributes over one-third to its non-monetary ETF portfolio—a feat undoubtedly also benefiting from the support of anchor investors like Huijin.
A highly concentrated holder base often implies stronger single-source dependency. However, compared to China AMC, which relies more on institutional wholesale, E Fund has also cultivated potential resilience within its core product.
For instance, the number of holders for E Fund's CSI 300 ETF has exceeded 100,000, second only to the dominant player in this sector, Huatai-PineBridge. The proportion held by individual investors has reached 3.2%, both figures being more than three times those of China AMC's equivalent fund.
The accumulation of a long tail of holders is also reflected in the growth of feeder funds. As of the mid-2025 report, E Fund's CSI 300 ETF feeder fund, with assets of 19.55 billion yuan, became the largest in its category. Its 922,000 holder accounts were second only to Tianhong, which benefits from inherent traffic advantages.
This indicates that while E Fund rapidly expanded its scale through on-exchange activities, it has also been quietly accumulating retail potential off-exchange by strengthening its omnichannel layout. This sustained搬运力 from regular investments reflecting household wealth allocation needs, if solidified into a longer-duration, more stable cash flow, could lead to further breakthroughs on the retail side.
Although the two giants have almost simultaneously breached the single-firm trillion-yuan threshold, the protracted battle between these oligopolies is far from over.
The single-firm trillion-yuan mark is an honor belonging to the oligopolies; for those chasing from behind, it undoubtedly represents a daunting iron curtain.
As of January 12, 2026, the total scale of ETFs across the market approached 6.3 trillion yuan. Within this, China AMC and E Fund together controlled over 1.9 trillion yuan, with a CR2 (two-firm concentration ratio) share exceeding 30%.
Including the third-ranked Huatai-PineBridge, the CR3 market share of the top three oligopolies surpasses 40%. Extending the view to the top five, which includes Southern Fund and Harvest Fund, the industry's CR5 concentration ratio approaches 55%.
The data断层 is glaringly obvious. The scale of the top player, China AMC, is almost more than double that of the fourth-ranked Southern Fund, and over six times that of the tenth-ranked Guotai Fund.
In mature equity markets, ETFs act akin to a "liquidity black hole," creating a typical positive feedback loop along the "scale-liquidity" dimension.
Larger scale leads to greater market depth, which lowers the impact cost of moving large sums of money, thereby increasing recognition from institutional capital. This, in turn, further inflates the scale, solidifying the liquidity cycle.
With the formation of a duopoly structure, the window of time-based advantage in the broad-based market for other players is likely closing rapidly.
This competitive edge, built on accumulated operational history and system reliability, is even transferring to new broad-based sectors.
For example, in the fierce "A500 battle," even if dozens of companies rushed in, after the initial issuance frenzy, liquidity still concentrated towards the top few players.
Thus, it's common to see that despite continuous new launches of A500 products, many latecomers, lacking liquidity, become "zombie funds" with average daily trading volumes below 10 million yuan.
For non-leading institutions, when revenue cannot cover the high marketing and system costs, and even fixed expenses for maintaining product operations become strained, the risk-reward ratio of betting on broad-based ETFs is becoming increasingly unfavorable.
In this red ocean competition, the ETF business is transforming from a strategic high ground for some institutions into a financial black hole—
Not participating now means forfeiting the future; participating now means sustaining ongoing losses.
Except for a very few firms focusing on niche strategies or special products that can survive in the cracks, the door for rushing into the broad-based ETF track is slowly closing.
However, in a winner-takes-all contest trending towards natural monopoly, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember the players who finish second or lower.
Behind the coronation of the single-firm trillion-yuan milestone lies a long-term metaphor for the industry's positioning.
The普遍费率 of 0.15%, even applied to a trillion-yuan scale, only equates to the revenue of a 100-billion-yuan active equity fund in the era of 1.5% management fees.
After deducting index licensing fees, system maintenance costs, market maker rebates, and marketing expenses, the profit effect of this 1-trillion-yuan scale, at least for now, remains不够性感.
For many public fund institutions, exerting effort on ETFs is arduous work characterized by "high investment, low margins, and reliance on sheer scale effects to endure."
But the primary contenders are not focused on immediate profits; they value the defensive capabilities of this business from an end-game perspective.
After all, active products managing hundreds of billions can easily see outflows due to market shifts or performance instability, whereas a trillion-yuan ETF foundation often possesses anti-cyclical strength capable of weathering bull and bear markets.
In the long run, this business trades extremely low margins for an exceptionally wide moat.
For latecomers, entering this market means first facing the窘境 where even server costs and index licensing fees cannot be recouped. This process resembles the platform economics of the internet industry: once a monopoly forms, newcomers cannot even afford the entry ticket.
This also signifies the role positioning of the public fund industry within the economic division of labor.
As ETFs enter the single-firm trillion-yuan era, leading institutions, despite their massive size, find their profits locked in; the business is不容有失, yet lacks excitement.
They have become the shadow exchanges and liquidity providers for the A-share market. Many significant market transactions now rely on the ETF channel for core asset allocation.
They are no longer mere asset managers but have retreated to become suppliers of a "new type of infrastructure" serving the capital markets, providing the fundamental energy known as "Beta."
When ETFs become a naturally monopolistic industry akin to water, electricity, and gas, the goal of the moat is not short-term excess returns, but近乎无限的久期.
From this perspective, what China AMC and E Fund are争夺 at the trillion-yuan gateway is no longer the current规模排名, but the future discourse power over the underlying assets of China's capital markets for the next decade.
Only by becoming a part of the infrastructure through this final showdown can they possess the robust power to穿越周期.
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