In 1990 and 1991, China set up securities exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen. In the past decade, the Chinese stock market has grown from the small to the large and from the disorderly to the orderly, to complete the journey that took a hundred years or more to cover in many countries. Today, China’s stock market has nearly 4,350 billion yuan in capital, 1,160 listed companies and 66.504 million investors.
Chinese stock market has promoted the reform of state-owned enterprises and the change of their system, and enabled a stable transition between the two systems. On the strength of the stock market in the past decade, many large state-owned enterprises have successfully realized the change of their systems one after another. As the change of the system in accordance with the market law is full of operational and demonstration characteristics, it has stimulated medium-sized and small state-owned enterprises to adopt the share-holding system, thus solving the most important problem—the system problem—during the transition from the planned economy to the market economy. As for ordinary citizens, the stock market has become another important channel for investment besides deposit accounts with banks.
The methods of trade in stocks have constantly improved. Now, a network system for securities exchange and account settlement has been formed, with the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges as the power-house, radiating to all parts of the country. Paperless distribution and trade have come to fruition, and the main technical means have reached the world’s advanced level. According to statistics of 2001, China issued 84 kinds of A share, and 126 varieties of scrip issues, collecting a total of 109.8 billion yuan, as well as nine kinds of B and H shares, collecting a total of US $7 billion.
