Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Zhou Zhengqing, a former head of the CSRC who continues to be influential in terms of PRC financial policy, gave a speech in Shenzhen recently at a conference on funding small enterprises.

Zhou is a vice chairman of the Finance and Economics Committee of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC). The NPCSC is the entity which recently passed amended version of the PRC Company Law and PRC Securities Law.

The speech includes a useful summary of efforts to make PRC stock markets support high-tech enterprises in China. Zhou begins with a 1999 policy statement stressing the importance of high tech development, 《关于加强技术创新、发展高科技、实现产业化的决定》, followed shortly by amendment of the PRC Company Law to allow for regulators to adjust listing requirements for high tech companies. Subsequent rules allowed enterprises designated as “high tech” by both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Science and Technology to be exempted from listing quotas.

The title of Zhou’s Shenzhen talk is “Fully unleash the functionality of capital markets, vigorously increase the development of high-tech enterprises, ceaselessly improve our capacity for innovation.” The full text in Chinese is available here.

I would translate the conference’s title as “SME Financing Forum, IV” (Di si jie zhong xiao qiye rongzi luntan). It began today in Shenzhen. It was jointly organized by the NDRC, MOST, SZSE and Shenzhen municipal government.