A total of 1,517 companies have gone public on the stock markets of the Chinese mainland by the end of September, and the volume of equity market capitalization ranked the fourth largest in the world.

As of Sept. 30, the volume reached 25.32 trillion yuan (US$3.37 trillion), taking up about 5.7 percent of the world's total.

In comparison, the overall volume at Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges stood around 4 trillion yuan at the end of 2002, ranking the fourth largest in Asia.

The statistics came from a delegation of central financial authorities to attend the ongoing 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Chairman Shang Fulin of the China Securities Regulatory Commission attributed the bull run of the market to the shareholder reform initiated in 2005 to float non-tradable state-own shares, tighter market supervision on insider trading, and the clean-up and rectification of the securities sector.

Shang said that the stock market is playing a better part acting as a barometer of China's economy. Currently, institutional investors such as securities, insurance and fund firms control 46 percent of the market equity, Shang said.

Sufficient liquidity, rapid economic growth and the return of heavyweight state-owned enterprises from overseas bourses to domestic A-share markets also drove up the markets.

A total of 425.04 billion yuan (US$56.7 billion) was raised on China's equity markets through initial and secondary public offerings in the first nine months of this year, surpassing the combined funds from 2002 to 2006, the China Securities Journal has reported.

In September alone, money raised through 15 initial public offerings (IPO) amounted to 149 billion yuan, or half of the money raised through IPOs so far this year. China Shenhua, the nation's biggest coal producer, raised 66.58 billion yuan from IPO, refreshing the 58.05 billion yuan record set by the China Construction Bank.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index opened the morning session at 6,056.95 points on Tuesday, up 26.86 points from the previous closing of 6,030.09 points. It has taken less than two months for the market to climb another 1,000 points after the key index rose above 5,000 points for the first time in August.

(Xinhua News Agency October 16, 2007)