The Beijing Stock Exchange starts trading in Beijing, China, November 15, 2021. /CFP
The Beijing Stock Exchange (BSE), China's newest bourse set to be a major base for innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), started trading on Monday morning, with the debut of the first batch of 81 companies.
Among the 81 listed companies, 10 were newly approved and 71 were transferred from the selected tier of China's National Equities Exchange and Quotations, also known as the "new third board."
Shares of the 10 newly-approved companies had triggered temporary suspension twice as of 10:20 a.m., as their prices jumped by over 60 percent. The shares continued surging after trading resumed, with the highest surging by over 500 percent at one point.
There is no limit on the price change of the newly listed companies on the first trading day, but trading will be suspended for 10 minutes when stock prices fluctuate by over 30 percent and over 60 percent.
Six business rules to implement securities transactions issued by the BSE three days ago, including the detailed rules for qualified foreign institutional investors (QFII) and RMB qualified foreign institutional investors (RQFII), also took effect on Monday.
QFII and RQFII programs were adopted in 2003 and 2011, respectively, channeling foreign capital into Chinese stocks and bonds. China removed QFII and RQFII quotas in May 2020, maintaining the country's pace to reform and further open its financial market despite the disruption caused by COVID-19 pandemic.
The BSE employs a registration-based initial public offering mechanism. It is the third in China to adopt such mechanism following Shenzhen's ChiNext and Shanghai's STAR Market.
Yi Huiman, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, hailed the launch of the BSE as "another landmark in China's capital market reform and development."
"It is also of vital importance in creating a multi-level capital market, improving financial support for SMEs, as well as promoting innovation-driven development, and economic transformation and upgrading," he said at the launching ceremony.
