Total assets, including both closed- and open-ended funds, grew 3% from July, or 1.5% from December last year, the association said. (in Chinese)
Compared to the figures in July, assets in bond funds saw the strongest month-on-month growth of nearly 7% to RMB 986.6bn.
Equity funds and mixed asset funds also recorded a 5.8% and 3.8% gain in assets to RMB 720bn and RMB 1.9trn respectively in August from a month earlier.
Still, the most popular product type remained money market funds, which edged up 0.7% in August. They accounted for 53.3% of overall mutual fund assets in the mainland.
However, QDII funds, which have overseas exposure by investing under the qualified domestic institutional investor programme with assigned quota, saw a 3% drop in assets to RMB 90.9bn last month.
Tighter rules
The regulators have been tightening rules on banks issuing wealth management products (WMP), which could invest in risky assets and generate high returns. WMPs totaled RMB 26.3trn ($3.9trn) as of June, according to a statement from the China Banking Wealth Management Registration System.
There has also been a clampdown on the private fund industry, which targets non-retail investors, and fund subsidiaries under mutual fund houses, which operate segregated-account services mainly for institutional investors.
These businesses are considered more loosely regulated than the mutual fund industry, which is open to all investors.
