China securities regulator pledges to strengthen market supervision

BEIJING — China will strengthen oversight on the securities market to keep it fair, open and impartial, a senior official said Wednesday.

Jiang Yang, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), made the remarks when responding to questions about priorities in the next phase of the CSRC's work during an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"The regulator will continue to crack down on violations of securities laws and regulations, including insider trading and market manipulation," said Jiang.

So far this year, the CSRC has imposed administrative penalties on 113 cases and slapped total fines of 6.4 billion yuan ($943 million), which is 1.5 times last year's total.

Meanwhile, the CSRC has prohibited 30 people from entering the market, almost equivalent to the total number in 2016, Jiang said.

China will advance reforms to make the capital market better serve the real economy. And the capital market will open wider to foreign investors in a steady way and domestic brokerages will expand business overseas, Jiang said.

To guard against risks, China will promote countercyclical regulation on stock, bond and futures markets and improve the emergency reaction mechanism.

The CSRC will carry out research and set up an investor compensation fund to better protect investors' interests, Jiang said.

China will push forward the development of a multi-tier capital market system.

By the end of May, there were 3,261 companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses, with a gross market value of 51.38 trillion yuan. Firms listed on the ChiNext Index, China's NASDAQ-style board of growth enterprises, have exceeded 11,000.

The market has shown more positive signs, according to Jiang.

Since March 2016, Shanghai and Shenzhen indices rose stably with a narrower range of fluctuation than before.

Market manipulation has been suppressed gradually.

Jiang also highlighted a stronger financing function of the capital market.

In the first six months of this year, 237 companies completed IPOs, raising more than 116 billion yuan, up 192 percent from the same period last year.

Since 2016, more than three-quarters of newly listed companies in China were high-tech firms.

Meanwhile, about 27 percent of 692 firms failed their IPO applications.

From January 2016 to the end of June this year, the value of mergers and acquisitions made by domestically listed companies hit 3.21 trillion yuan, ranking second worldwide.

China's capital market as a whole will not alter its direction of reform toward market-oriented and law-governed development, CSRC spokesperson Zhang Xiaojun said last month.