To many Hong Kong stock investors, the Hang Seng Index or the blue chips are no longer the only good choice for them, the Hang Seng China Enterprises stocks (H-share) and Hang Seng China-Affiliated Corp stocks (red chips), especially the newly listed ones, have also become a very reasonable choice for a large number of them.

In fact, many Hong Kong investors have become "fans" of the newly listed H-share ventures. To many Hong Kong people, the names of Dalian Port Corporation, Shanghai Prime Machinery Company Limited may be just ordinary names of Chinese mainland ventures, but to shock investors, the successful application of the initial public offering (IPO) of the two companies means wealth and money for them.

As many as 800,000 application forms of the Dalian Port Corporation's IPO still could not meet the needs of investors in Hong Kong. Many residents took out most of their savings or borrow many from the banks or securities firms to take part in the "lucky draw".

Hong Kong stock market made double good news on Wednesday with the Hang Seng Index breaching the 17,000-point barrier in 5.5 years and market capitalization making a milestone record of 10 trillion (1.28 trillion U.S. dollars).

Though the blue chips went down 10.05 points on Thursday, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index till rose 52.29 points.

The listing of the two companies at the end of last month led to another round of H share fever following the successful listing of Hunan Nonferrous Corporation and some other Chinese mainland ventures.

Dao Daohua, senior economist of Bank of China (Hong Kong) attributed the major driven force of the 10 trillion HK dollars of market capitalization to the listed Chinese mainland ventures.

According to statistics of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Corporation (HKEx), a total of 70 ventures listed in the HKEx, raising 192 billion HK dollars (24.62 billion U.S. dollars), about 80 percent of the raised funds came from the Chinese mainland enterprises.

Dao said, thanks to the fund raising of Chinese mainland enterprises in Hong Kong, the scale of Hong Kong stock market has been expanding constantly.

The sound economic growth of the Chinese mainland has made investors all the more attracted to the China concept.

Dao said, in a short term, the listing of the new Chinese mainland ventures would go smoothly, and the mainland's introduction of the qualified domestic institutional investor (QDII) scheme is expected to further promote the Hong Kong stock market.

He believed that more Chinese mainland state-owned enterprises would come to list in Hong Kong following their related reforms.

At present, the market capitalization of the China Construction Bank has already reached 775.1 billion HK dollars (99.37 billion U.S. dollars), ranking the second largest Hong Kong listed venture after HSBC.

From 2002, the market capitalization of the H shares and the red chips grew by 30 percent annually and the price of PetroChina has grown form 1.2 HK dollars per share in 2001 to 9.25 HK dollars.

Experts here believed that the blue chips have limited rooms for price hiking after many years development, while the H shares and the red chips just started their development process, they have chances for price hikes.

Ronald Arculli', new Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Chairman, said on Wednesday that "we are proud of this achievement but we will not become complacent. We will continue to emphasize market quality to ensure our market remains attractive to issuers and investors."

Source: Xinhua