2016年CRI China's Securities Regulator Says to Learn from Market Rout（在线收听）

Xiao Gang, head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, started his keynote address by acknowledging regulation defects and showing determination to make changes.

"The abnormal fluctuation lately has shown how immature our stock market is: our investors are still irrational. The trading system is far from perfect. We are not well prepared in terms of regulation. It has also exposed other problems, such as loopholes left, and poor skills on the part of CSRC in regulation. We must learn from this profound lesson."

China's A-share market has suffered a dramatic fall of 38 percent since its peak in mid-June, and the plunge has erased 5 trillion US dollars in market value.

To deal with the market volatilities, Xiao Gang reiterated that the commission will resolutely crack down on illegal trading and enhance supervision over investors' accounts.

"China will investigate the borrowing of accounts, the opening of virtual accounts, parent-son accounts and accounts with more than one shareholder attached and ban all kinds of illegal securities and futures trading."

Xiao pointed out that more supervision is also needed to ensure transparency in the stock market, as some listed companies have failed to disclose real information to investors.

In his speech, the head of securities watchdog mention the word "supervision" 99 times in total.

However, Xiao did not directly talk about the "circuit breaker mechanism", which has now been suspended by the CSRC on January 7th to maintain market stability.

Under the short-lived system, a rise or fall of 5 percent in the benchmark CSI 300 index triggered a 15-minute suspension in stock trading, while a move of 7 percent closed the market for the rest of the day.

To deepen reform of the Chinese capital market, the securities regulator has also promised to gradually launch a registration-based initial public offering system.

"Registration system reform will be a step-by-step process, and could not be achieved in one step. The issue of new shares will not open immediately, thus there will be no massive expansion of new stocks."

Meanwhile, Xiao Gang revealed that the regulator aims to grant international investors greater access to China's capital market in 2016.

As such, China will initiate a Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, improve the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and study the feasibility of Shanghai-London Stock Connect later this year.

For CRI, I am Wang Mengzhen.