The benchmark Shanghai composite index, grouping hard-currency B shares open to foreign investors and yuan-denominated A shares, rose 0.32 percent to 1,504.436 points after rebounding on Wednesday from a two-week slide.

The Shenzhen sub-index also closed up 0.37 percent to 3,276.1 points.

Jinzhou Port was the top performer on Shanghai's B-share market, rising 4.28 percent to 46.3 US cents. Its A shares were also among the top gainers, jumping 5.04 percent to 5.63 yuan (68 US cents).

The port operator said yesterday it would post a profit for the first half of the year, reversing last year's slight loss.

It said it would publish detailed figures at the end of August.

Anhui Conch Cement saw its A shares rise 2.01 percent to 8.14 yuan (98.3 US cents) after the firm said its first-half earnings would rise 50 percent year on year.

Shenzhen's B-share index rose 0.55 percent to 218.39 points and Shanghai's inched up 0.07 percent to 113.288 points.

Analyst Zhou Lin at Huatai Securities said: "The latest market rally was not accompanied by decent volume, indicating it did not represent a trend."

Despite the rebound, the Shanghai composite index has still fallen 4 percent since mid-June on fears of a crackdown on the illegal use of bank loans to buy stocks and worries about corporate earnings ahead of the interim results season.

Analysts said they expected more technical buying in the near term as recent falls had capped the downside, but there was little chance of an immediate market recovery.

Analyst Chen Dong at MF Securities said: "Investors are cautious about the stock-market trend in the second half of this year and will not be willing to build heavy positions."

Luo Yanxin, an analyst at China Southern Securities, said: "There may be some more light technical buying in the near term, but the potential for share indices to rise sharply is limited."

Analysts said they expected the composite index to move narrowly between 1,460 and 1,520 points over the next few days.

Shenzhen's A-share index edged up 0.44 percent to 431.29 points and Shanghai's rose 0.32 percent to 1,575.272.

But agricultural technology developer Tiange Tech bucked the trend to become Shenzhen's biggest decliner with a 5.6 percent fall to 6.24 yuan (75.4 US cents) after it said it was under regulatory investigation for having possibly violated rules.

In the currency market, China's yuan ended flat at its intraday low of 8.2775 against the US dollar yesterday as a steady inflow of dollars from the country's strong trade surplus kept the domestic currency firm, dealers said.

The yuan moved narrowly near the strong end of a government-set range for the entire session, touching an intraday high of 8.2773. Turnover fell to US$360 million from an already thin US$390 million on Wednesday.

For the past two years, healthy trade surpluses and strong foreign investment have kept the yuan at the firm end of its wafer-thin trading range of 8.2760 to 8.2800 usually enforced by the People's Bank of China, the central bank.

(China Daily July 4, 2003)