ABSTRACT
The development of the securities market in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China or PRC) is truly a legend. No shareholding company existed in the PRC from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. A national securities market began to emerge only after 1993. In 1991, a year after the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange were established, there were only 14 listed companies in China, with total market capitalization of merely RMB10.9 billion yuan.1 By the end of 2009, 1718 companies were listed on the two stock exchanges, and the total market capitalization exceeded RMB24,393.9 billion yuan.2 In addition, 28 companies are listed on the ChiNext, China’s NASDAQ-like growth enterprise board (chuangyeban) opened on 23 October 2009.3 Today, the Chinese stock market, excluding Hong Kong, is the second largest in the world.4 Meantime, starting from scratch in the early 1990s, China has now established a very sophisticated national regulatory framework for governing the securities market.
