Two new finance-sector initiatives aimed at opening up Chinese markets got underway today, less than a week after index giant MSCI took the landmark step of including domestic Chinese shares in its mainstream benchmarks.

Tradeweb, a bond-trading venue owned by Thomson Reuters, said it will become the first non-Chinese trading hub to establish a connection to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System, allowing overseas investors to invest in the China Interbank Bond Market for the first time.