April 1, 2009
After a decade of debate, China’s securities regulator has finally decided that the time is ripe for a second stock market independent of the two major boards in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Yesterday, the CSRC released a set of rules governing the growth enterprise board, which will be mainly targeted at smaller-size, high-tech companies.
The Interim Regulating Measures, which are set to take effect starting on May 1, led to reports yesterday that said, “China’s Nasdaq-style second board will open on May 1.”
However, today’s Securities Times ran an article that quoted CSRC vice chairman Yao Gang as saying that the new board is more likely to open in August. According to Yao, about half of the 20 candidate companies selected last year to be the first to go public could no longer meet entry qualifications due to their declining performance.
On other newspaper front pages:
The Beijing News has been following developments in the case of a professor who was reported missing on Monday. The man, an assistant professor from Tsinghua University, left home last week after quarrelling with his wife. Today’s front-page photo showed him returning with rescuers who discovered him yesterday in the mountains on the outskirts of Beijing.
April 1, 2009
Several Guangzhou-based newspapers, including the Information Times, covered a police raid which successfully busted an underground drug lab hidden in an apartment complex in Yuexiu District. The factory was accidentally discovered when residents complained to the police about the stink from the apartment, and nearby plants that had mysteriously withered.
The main image on the Sunshine Daily illustrated a food safety-related story concerning the local government-affiliated “pork plant” (肉联厂) in Guangzhou which sold clean test results to pig farmers without testing their pigs.
Yu Keping, deputy director of the Central Translation Bureau and noted advocate of democracy, also made the cover of the newspaper. In an article reprinted from Xinhua’s China Comment, Yu expressed his view that it is wrong to assume that the marterial well-being (民生) can substitute for political democracy (民主).
Also on the cover of the paper is the news that China will send two naval vessels, the frigate Huangshan and the destroyer Guangzhou, to the Gulf of Aden to replace the first fleet, which has been carrying out its escort mission there since January 6.
- Securities Times (Chinese): China’s second board stock market is likely to launch in August
- The Beijing News (Chinese): The missing Tsinghua professor was found
- Daily Sunshine (Chinese): Clean test results are sold by the government affiliated “pork factory”
- Xinhua (Chinese): Yu Keping: It is wrong to substitute democracy with people’s material well-being