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China stepped up its crackdown on market misconduct in the first eight months of the year, with the number of new cases under investigation almost double the same period of 2011, an official from China's securities regulator said over the weekend.
A total of 291 tip-offs for cases of insider trading and market manipulation were received in the first eight months of this year, up 1.8 times from the same period of 2011, Zhang Yujun, assistant chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said Saturday at the fourth China-ASEAN Summit Forum on Financial Cooperation & Development in Nanning, capital of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The commission also launched 232 new investigations in the first eight months of the year, 1.9 times the same period of last year, he said.
According to Zhang, the international economic and financial situation has been getting more complicated and changeable, and China's economy has been facing increasing downward pressure since the beginning of this year.
"All these factors combined pose great challenges to the stable operation of the Chinese capital market," he said.
The commission will persist in its zero tolerance policy toward illegal practices such as insider trading and market manipulation, he said.
"The increase in the number of cases does not mean there has been more misconduct in the market than in previous years, but rather that the CSRC has strengthened market regulation, especially since the new chairman Guo Shuqing took office at the end of last year," Li Daxiao, director of the research institute at the Shenzhen-based Yingda Securities, told the Global Times.
In just under a year, Guo has unveiled a slew of confidence-boosting regulatory measures targeting insider trading, market manipulation and false disclosure.
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