By the end of July, fund management companies, securities companies, insurance companies and QFII had taken shares accounting for 44% of the total capitalization of the A-share market, information from China Securities Regulatory Commission shows.

Among them, fund management companies have become the main institutional investors in China's securities market. Information shows that during the first half of the year, among the 347 fund management products taken by 59 fund management companies, the value of products that focus on stocks has reached 1.67 trillion yuan, accounting for 31% of the circulating capitalization in the A-share market.

The proportion of insurance fund in the A-share market is also rising, due to the government's related policies. In July this year, China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) decided that it would allow social insurance fund management bodies to allocate 10% of their insurance fund at most into the securities market, while previously, the upper limit investing proportion was only 5%. Information from CIRC shows that during the first half of the year, insurance fund had generated 137.4 billion yuan of revenues in total. Among this, revenues generated through the purchase of fund management products, stocks and non-listed stocks accounted for 72.9% of the total revenues.

China's market reform has laid a solid foundation for the development of institutional investors in China. In 2002, China initiated a market-oriented supervising system for institutional investors. From then on, institutional investors have made rapid progress. In 2003, China implemented the pricing system to clear the obstacle in stock issuing. During the first half of this year, the total assets of fund management products had exceeded 1.8 trillion yuan. Many companies involved in securities business had made lucrative profits.

As China opens wider and wider to the outside world, more and more overseas institutional investors have come to China for investment. Last May, China and the United State kicked off the second round of Sino-US strategic dialogue. During this summit, the two countries agreed to restore the approval system for the establishment of securities companies and set up more joint-funded securities companies in China. In addition, they planned to raise the investment amount for QFII up to 30 billion US dollars.

The development of institutional investors has made great progress in the past few years, which is in fact, the result of China's Opening-up. In the mid and long run, as China's marketization process further deepens, and as China gradually opens its securities market to the outside world, it can be expected that institutional investors will play a greater role in China's capital market in future, said Xia Bin, director of the China Securities Regulatory Commission's Research Center.