Efforts will be made to introduce more institutional investors and develop the bond market, especially corporate bonds, said ShenChongying, head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) Shanghai office.

Confronted with tough competition from the world market, Shanghai will introduce more financial products, he said, adding that oil futures and stock index futures will soon be included.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE), the third largest stock exchange in Asia after Tokyo and Hong Kong, has also pledged to develop its exchange to international standards.

SSE general manager Zhu Congjiu said in a bid to build a "bluechips exchange", SSE will take measures to attract large and profitable enterprises.

A number of large Chinese enterprises have been listed in the SSE, five of which have raised 4 billion yuan(US$482 million) each in the market.

The SSE has also started to build a new trading system, website and information management system in cooperation with the world IT giants IBM and HP.

Its present trading system has been updated four times with 29 million deals processed and 60 million made each day on its exchange.

At the end of June this year, 675 companies were listed on the Shanghai stock market, compared with eight companies 10 years ago. The capitalization has risen from 3 billion yuan(US$362 million) to 3.1 trillion yuan(US$373 billion), equal to 32 percent of the country's GDP and was ranked 13th among the world's 200 stock exchanges.

(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2002)