China's share markets slumped on Wednesday amid increasing worries over shrinking liquidity and an overnight Wall Street fall.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dived 4.66 percent, or 152.01points, to close at 3112.72. The Shenzhen Component Index dropped 4.15 percent, or 545.44 points, to finish at 12,591.66.

Combined turnover on the two bourses expanded to 245.25 billion yuan (35.75 billion U.S. dollars) from the previous trading day's 193.19 billion yuan.

Losers outnumbered gainers by 825 to 47 in Shanghai and 707 to 43 in Shenzhen.

Metal stocks led Wednesday's drop. The index of the non-ferrous metal sector was down by 6.51 percent as metal prices dropped in the futures market. The index of the iron and steel sector fell 5.47 percent as most of the steel companies saw heavy slump on the day.

Resources-related stocks went down as the newly released figures weakened investors' confidence in future economic growth. PetroChina was down 5.04 percent to close at 14.14 yuan and Sinopec dropped 5.2 percent to close at 13.12 yuan.

The A-share market began to show worries over shrinking liquidity, said analysts. Tuesday's central bank figures show new yuan-denominated loans slowed to 355.9 billion yuan (52.04 billion U.S. dollars) in July, sharply down from 1.53 trillion yuan in June.

Apart from that, the Wall Street market fell on Tuesday and the international oil price dropped below 70 U.S. dollars per barrel on a pessimistic economic outlook.

(Xinhua News Agency August 12, 2009)