Participants at a seminar on June 3 called on the government to back up China's increasingly marginalized B-share markets and create opportunities to merge the A-share and B-share markets, according to China Securities News.

"How to reposition the B-share market is a major problem restricting the development of the B-share market and B-share companies," Feng Bing, former editor-in-chief of Economy Daily, said at the seminar.

Liu Yingqiu, president of the Graduate Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said the time was not ripe for the B-share market to be merged into the country's A-share market due to the fact that the renminbi is not yet fully convertible.

Yin Zhongli, a researcher with the Institute of Finance under CASS, also said the biggest problem is with the repositioning of the B-share market.

Currently, China's regulators haven't figured out specific solutions to handle the problem.

Yin also suggested that China should open the B-share market and allow institutional investors to buy or sell B-shares, in a bid to increase liquidity and expand the market.

Liu Jipeng, a professor with the Capital University of Economics and Business£¬ said upon completion of the split-share reform, the B-share market should be merged into the A-share market based on market prices.

The average price of stocks on the B-share market is about half the average price of A shares. Theoretically, B-shares could double in value once the B-share market is subject to the same policies as the A-share market.

Established in the early stage of China's economic reform, the B-share market was originally meant as a tool to assist domestic businesses in attracting overseas investors. It made a remarkable contribution to getting foreign currency needed for economic development when China started to open up.

The economic situation has changed so radically in past decades that China has gone from a shortage in foreign currency to the national holding of the world's largest foreign exchange reserve as of last year.

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Since 1997, domestic businesses have been eligible to list on overseas stock markets as well as the Hong Kong stock exchange. The H-share stocks traded on the Hong Kong exchange and the "red-chip" shares of the mainland's leading companies traded on foreign markets have attracted large amounts of capital needed by mainland enterprises. As a result, the B-share market has been marginalized in the financing of mainland businesses.

Given the current situation, the B-share market should be repositioned as a market where domestic individuals and businesses can invest their foreign currency in mainland enterprises, Yin said.

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