The sales of state-owned shares are only adding to the pressures bearing down on the Chinese stock market. However, the State Council’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) is considering passing regulations that would prevent such a share swarm from occurring by carefully supervising the sales of state-owned shares.

Some insiders have hinted that the regulations will include “Temporary Methods of Managing Transfers of Shares of Listed State-owned Enterprises” and could be issued as early as this month. The regulations will indicate that for listed state-owned companies with under 1 billion shares, transferred shares should not amount to over 5 percent of total shares within three consecutive years; while for those companies exceeding 1 billon shares, a 50 million share cap will be placed on any one transaction while all shares sold over three consecutive years should not account for more than 3 percent of the total.

For more details, please read the full story in Chinese (http://www.cs.com.cn/xwzx/12/200707/t20070706_1159185.htm)

(China.org.cn July 6, 2007)