China's STAR market injects impetus into sci-tech innovation

BEIJING -- China's Nasdaq-style sci-tech innovation board, known as the STAR market, has continued to advance the innovative transformation of the Chinese economy.

Friday marks the board's third anniversary. During the past three years, 439 firms have been listed on the STAR market, raising more than 640 billion yuan ($95 billion) via initial public offerings, data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange showed.

As of Thursday, the market's total value is over 5.5 trillion yuan, with high-tech enterprises accounting for 90 percent of the total listed companies.

Sci-tech firms listed on the board have posted stellar performance thanks to the impetus provided by technology. In the first quarter of this year, companies on the STAR market saw their net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company soar 62 percent year-on-year.

As China has continued to deepen its high-level opening-up of the capital market, the board has become increasingly attractive to foreign investment. So far this year, foreign institutional transactions on the market accounted for 9 percent of the total, up 7 percentage points from 2020.

The STAR market was launched on the SSE on July 22, 2019, kicking off a trailblazing leg of the country's innovation drive and capital market reform.

The board was designed to support companies in the high-tech and strategic emerging sectors, in order to facilitate the innovative transformation of the Chinese economy and explore ways to make institutional improvements in the capital market.