(Photo: CGTN)

Overseas institutions are racing into the Chinese bonds market lured by the country's continuous opening-up and steady economic growth.

About 300 new overseas institutional investors opened their accounts in the first quarter of 2019, quadrupling that of Q1 2018, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trading System and National Interbank Funding Center.

Q1 transactions by overseas institutional investors totaled 919.1 billion yuan (136.81 billion US dollars), up 31 percent on an annual basis.

Products from global leading assets management firms like BlackRock have entered the Chinese bonds market, the center said.

China's yuan-denominated bonds started to be added to the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Index on Monday. A total of 356 government and policy bank bonds will be added into the index over the next 20 months.