China to reform Shanghai sci-tech STAR Market: CSRC
China will unveil eight measures to reform its five-year-old Nasdaq-style sci-tech board under the Shanghai Stock Exchange to promote the nation's technology and innovation.  Delivering a keynote speech at the annual Lujiazui financial forum in Shanghai, Wu Qing, the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), said reforms of the Science and Technology Innovation Board, or STAR Market, will also better facilitate the development of new quality productive forces, called for by President Xi Jinping.  He said the reforms will cover arrangements related to share offerings, underwriting and mergers. Wu said technology innovation is at the core of developing new quality productive forces, and long-term investments, or patient capital, shall be further expanded to support the technology and innovation enterprises in the nation. He also said the CSRC will further ramp up supervision and law enforcement in areas such as high-frequency quantitative trading to protect investors, and will clamp down on financial fraud of listed firms by encouraging whistleblowers to report issues. Dubbed the “broker butcher”, Wu, who was appointed to chair the commission in February, is known for his forceful measures, including posing curbs on new share offerings and strict punishment for fraudulent listings and accounting. Since his appointment, Chinese stocks have seen a rebound, following a three-year decline. Hong Kong stock markets advanced on Wednesday in early trade following his announcements. Separately, Pan Gongsheng, the Governor of the People’s Bank of China, said at the same forum that the country’s central bank is studying the implementation of government bond trading, along with the finance ministry. Pan noted that such sovereign bond trading will be implemented via a gradual process, and that the pace of sovereign bond sales, term structure, and the custody system will also need to be studied and optimised. However, he stressed that such practices cannot be equated to quantitative easing, and said they are tools for managing liquidity and injecting base money. “There will be both buying and selling [of the sovereign bonds], and it will be combined with other tools to create an accommodative liquidity environment,” he said. The central bank chief also suggested that there is more room to ease monetary policy as other economies are pivoting to cut interest rates this year.