Feb. 17 marked one of the most important milestones in the regulatory overhaul of China’s stock market. The country finally completed the rollout of a registration-based IPO system in its A-share market and issued new supervision rules for overseas listings by Chinese companies. The latter, which had been open for public feedback since December 2021, essentially expands the registration-based system to cover overseas listings.
(Editor’s note: The registration-based IPO reform fundamentally lets the market make the choices under a framework of tightened market and legal constraints. The registration-based approach has information disclosure as its core, making it more transparent and predictable compared to the previous system, which, from approval to pricing, was heavily controlled by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, also known as the CSRC.)
