A concept photo of China’s stock market Illustration: VCG
China’s Nasdaq-style sci-tech innovation board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, known as the STAR Market, marked its seventh anniversary on Wednesday. Seven years after its debut, the STAR Market has evolved from a “pilot field” for capital market reform into a hub for “hard technology” enterprises, contributing to China’s tech self-reliance.
As of Wednesday, the STAR Market had supported the listing of 611 companies with a combined market capitalization exceeding 15 trillion yuan ($2.21 trillion). Notably, companies on the board have maintained research and development (R&D) intensity of nearly 13 percent for seven consecutive years, significantly above the national average, consistently leading all A-share sectors in research spending.
“The STAR Market, having developed for seven years, can be regarded as a model ‘pilot field’ for China’s capital support for technological development,” Tian Lihui, dean of the Institute of Financial Development at Nankai University, told the Global Times on Wednesday, noting that the board possesses multiple unique advantages in terms of institutional design, industrial layout, and an innovation ecosystem.
At the institutional level, the registration-based IPO reform has drastically shortened listing timelines, giving the board a clear edge in approval efficiency. Hundreds of hard-tech firms have formed the vanguard of domestic replacements in sectors such as semiconductors and biomedicine, serving as the pacesetters of new quality productive forces.
The rising stake of institutional investors is shifting the market logic away from speculation toward R&D rigor, as reflected in the board’s consistently high R&D intensity, Tian said.
In June, the STAR Market began a new round of reform, as the Shanghai Stock Exchange issued review guidelines on the application of the fifth set of listing standards on the STAR Market for artificial intelligence (AI) large-language model enterprises, providing stronger support for the development of technology enterprises that have achieved breakthroughs in key and core technologies.
Speaking at the 2026 Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai in June, Wu Qing, chairperson of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, noted that amid efforts to foster industries of the future, the commission will support hard-tech companies in quantum technology, biomanufacturing, embodied AI and other sectors to list on the STAR Market.
Over the past seven years, most of the STAR Market’s institutional innovations have been extended to the broader market, playing a leading role, Dong Shaopeng, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
The STAR Market could further refine its market-oriented valuation and pricing mechanisms tailored to the characteristics of the hard-tech sector, continuously enhance investor protection, and continue to cultivate and expand patient capital to enhance the market’s stability and better serve technology innovation, Dong said.
The high-quality developmentof China’s capital market is attracting foreign financial institutions, which are increasingly bullish on China’s A-share market. Meng Lei, China equity strategist of UBS Securities, said in a research note sent to the Global Times on Wednesday that the trend of steadily improving earnings for the A-share market, and for the technology sector, remains unchanged.
“Under the baseline scenario, we project that the earnings growth rate for all A-share companies will rise from 3.9 percent last year to 11 percent this year,” Meng said, with stepped-up policy support for the tech sector.
