China will gradually open its securities market to foreign
investors and will fulfill its commitments after the WTO accession,
said Zhou Xiaochuan, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory
Commission (CSRC) Thursday.
Addressing a press briefing at the 16th World Congress of
Accountants, Zhou said China started to open its securities market
to foreign investors in 1992, when B share market was launched and
then some Chinese enterprises were listed overseas.
Recently, the regulation and application criteria concerning the
Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) were stipulated and
many foreign-funded financial institutions showed great interest
about it and are actively preparing for the application, he
said.
He
said that the CSRC has received some preliminary documents and the
QFII is in sound progress.
Zhou noted that the key to the QFII, as a trial, is to set up a
mechanism and that greater steps then could be taken based on its
success.
As
to how large the QFII would become in one or two years' time, Zhou
said it is a question involving interaction between each side of
the market, and the regulator could not set a target in
advance.
Zhou said the QFII was initiated in 1998 and was not introduced
until now, showing that the policy was prudently formulated and
that it requires a process to reach the agreement after study and
discussion.
The QDII (Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor) also requires
a process of study and discussion before reaching the agreement and
it is hard to set a timetable as the study is not mature enough, he
said.
When asked to comment on the CSRC's international cooperation, Zhou
said the CSRC has signed MoUs with regulatory authorities in more
than 10 countries, specifying the cooperation on market supervision
between both sides.
The CSRC is also actively participating in the International
Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the CSRC's
international cooperation is generally in sound progress, he
added.
(Xinhua News Agency November 22, 2002)