China stocks surge as government restores faith

China's main Shanghai stock index jumped more than five percent in morning trade on Friday, as sentiment turned for the better on government moves to boost the market, dealers said.

The Shanghai Composite Index surged 5.12 percent, or 189.96 points, to 3,899.29. The Shenzhen Composite Index, which tracks stocks on China's second exchange, added 4.02 percent, or 78.55 points, to 2,033.90.

The Shanghai market rocketed 5.76 percent on Thursday, after the government announced additional policies to curb a weeks-long rout.

They included a ban on big shareholders -- those holding at least five percent stakes -- and company executives from selling stock for the next six months and a police crackdown on short-selling.

"The market has not completely recovered yet," Haitong Securities analyst Zhang Qi told AFP.

"But in general it has started to rebound with blue-chip companies more resilient than small company stocks, which will help stabilise the market," he said.
More than 1,400 shares on the two markets remained suspended, Bloomberg News reported, almost half of all listed companies. Trading suspensions tend to slow market activity and defer risk until later.

Before Thursday's rebound, the market had fallen more than 30 percent after a spectacular bull run peaked on June 12, raising fears for the wider economy.

China's economy, the world's second largest, is already faltering. Gross domestic product expanded 7.4 percent in 2014, the slowest pace since 1990, and weakened further in the first three months of this year.

But the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Thursday that there was no reason to lose faith in China's economy because of the bursting stock market bubble.

"There is no particular reason to have lost confidence," IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard told a news conference in Washington.

The spillover of the market rout into the economy is "likely to be small", he added.

Over nearly two weeks, the government has sought to arrest the stock market slide, a dramatic reversal of 150 percent surge in the 12 months to the peak which was fuelled by millions of retail investors using borrowed funds.

Steps have included allowing insurance companies to invest more assets in stocks and a programme to buy the shares of smaller companies.

The country's 111 major state-owned enterprises were also barred from selling shares in their listed subsidiaries by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which oversees them.