Chinese stock markets closed higher Thursday with major stock indices reaching new highs since early June, when major indexes of the Shanghai market dropped below 1,000 point level.

Major blue chips, such as Sinopec, China Unicom and banking shares, continued to rise Thursday. Their share prices have gone up by up to 40 percent, which contributed significantly to the rising indices.

The benchmark Composite Stock Index of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which covers yuan-denominated A shares and foreign-currency B shares, rose to 1,183.58 points, up 1.59 percent from the previous trading.

The Component Stock Index on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange closed at 3,128.42 points, up 2.14 percent from Wednesday.

Total volumes of shares traded on the markets stood at 28.2 billion yuan (3.48 billion US dollars), also a record high in the past few months.

Hu Jun, an analyst with Guotai Junan Securities Co., said the pressure on the stock markets is growing rapidly for downward fluctuation as the Shanghai composite index approaching 1,200 points.

Chinese stock markets, which were created 15 years ago, have fallen continuously since 2001. Poor corporate governance and split share structure problem have been blamed as major problems for the sluggish market performance.

The split share structure refers to the existence of a large volume of non-tradable state-owned and legal personal shares, about two-thirds of the shares of the firms listed on the two markets.

China launched an experiment since early May to tackle the problem so that those State shares will be eligible for floating on the markets after majority stock holders pay compensation by around 30 percent of the shares to minority stock holders.

The Chinese economy has been growing by an annual average of 9.4 percent for the past 27 years, while the domestic stock markets, far from being an economic barometer, were down by half during the past four years since 2001.

Source: Xinhua