A certain friendly company has cancelled the application for a Hong Kong exchange license.
Now exchanges without a Hong Kong license can open accounts for Chinese people at will. With a Hong Kong license, there are more restrictions. Not only is there no market in Hong Kong, but the mainland market will also be lost.
Several exchanges with Hong Kong licenses are not doing well. The largest H exchange has a daily trading volume of only more than 20 million U.S. dollars, and more than 80% of the trading volume is fiat currency for U.S. dollars.
They got an exchange license to do foreign exchange business.