A leading Chinese securities official said Tuesday that it's time to carry out pilot projects to solve the problem of state-owned shares of listed firms.

A deputy chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission, who asked not to be named, told Xinhua the experiments will go ahead on the condition that the legitimate interests of minority stock holders are protected.

He did not elaborate on the issue, or the split share structure, which has been a hot topic for market participants and experts on the country's stock markets.

The split share structure refers to the existence of a large volume of non-tradable state and corporate shares and the fact that only about one-third of the shares in domestically listed companies are floated on the market.

More than 1,000 proposals have been made by experts and market participants to solve the issue as it has been blamed by investors and experts as the major problem for the country's sluggish stock markets.

Market performance on Chinese stock markets has been lackluster during the past three years as investors are hoping to see an end to the split share structure, a residue of China's planned economy.

The irrational structure puts public investors at a worse position than the actual controllers of the listed companies.