The Chinese government has selected the property right exchanges in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin as the first ones to trade the country's flagship state-owned enterprises, according to the Economic Observer.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which takes charge of 11.83 trillion yuan (US$1.43 trillion) of state assets, has chosen the Beijing Assets and Equity Exchange, the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange and the Tianjin Assets and Equity Exchange to trade part of the assets in the SOEs, the newspaper said.

The commission will officially release the news soon and at the same time unveil the regulation laying out a host of criteria to regulate more than 200 property right exchanges in the country, according to the Beijing-based Chinese newspaper.

At a press conference in Shanghai on Thursday, Cai Minyong, president of the Shanghai exchange, said the commission would select the local exchange as a platform to sell part of the operations in the flagship SOEs.

China has been accelerating its reduction of its ownership in the SOEs this year as the government has decided to allow the private sector and foreign investors to play a bigger part in the economy.

At present, the commission owns the nation's 188 most important enterprises, such as China Mobile Communications Corp, the country's biggest cell-phone service carrier, and Baosteel Group Corp, the nation's largest steelmaker.

The commission made it a compulsory rule at the end of last year to require the sale and purchase of state-owned assets through regional property exchanges to prevent fraudulent action, such as the artificial under-valuation of state assets.

In tandem with the central government's call to divest state assets, the Shanghai government plans to slash its stakes in the city's SOEs to below 20 percent in the coming year, according to Zhu Shiyin, president of Shanghai State-owned Assets Operation Co Ltd, a unit under the local government that manages the state-owned assets.

The Shanghai exchange was created in December last year following the merger of the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange and the Shanghai Technology Stock Exchange to make it easier for the government to shed the state assets.

Last week, the exchange listed 184 projects for either capital investment or technology transfer.

The technology-heavy projects cover fields of bio-medicine, information technology, new materials and mechanics.

From January to February this year, the exchange reported the value of transactions hit 36 billion yuan.

(Eastday.com March 22, 2004)