Chinese stock markets gained Thursday due to good policy clarification and a technical rebound after shedding about 70 points in the past month.

The benchmark Composite Stock Index of Shanghai Stock Exchange,which covers yuan-denominated A shares and foreign-currency B shares, closed at 1,155.78 points, up 23.71 points, or 2.1 percent higher.

The Component Stock Index of Shenzhen Stock Exchange, meanwhile, closed at 2,884.65 points, up 37.09 points, or 1.30 percent higher.

Total transaction volume of the two markets stood at 14.4 billion yuan (US$ 1.77 billion).

Guo Jianxin, an official with the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), the country's state-owned assets supervisor, told a press conference Wednesday the administration is "active" in promoting the on-going stock market reforms, and encourages innovation in the reform schemes.

Guo said all the state-hold listed companies are "actively and earnestly" bracing for the reform plans, including those listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange, whose shares are known as H-shares.

Guo's remarks, by echoing the major points of a relevant document SASAC issued early September, endeavor to eliminate the worries that the SASAC might prolong the approval of reform plans of major state-owned firms, and that the SASAC tend to offer less compensation for the tradable share holders.

Some analysts held that these worries are among the factors causing continuous declines of stock prices in the past week, which the central government has taken every effort to stabilize since the beginning of the share reform.

The commission has a decisive role in influencing the markets as State-owned shares account for two thirds of the shares of the country's domestically listed firms.

Influential blue chip Sinopec, which is listed on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges, rose by 4.56 percent on Thursday.

Liu Mingsheng, an analyst with Hualin Securities Co., said the strong performance of Sinopec share helped boost the confidence of stock market participants.

China launched its reform to float its untradeable shares in early May as part of its efforts to invigorate the country's capital market, which has been declining during the past four years.

During the share reform, aiming to flow the untradable shares, the untradable share holder commonly offers three shares to the tradable share holders for every ten shares, in order to make up for the loss caused by a price drop of tradable shares as a large amount of untradable ones enter the market.

(Xinhua News Agency September 30, 2005)