Financial trading in China has been unaffected by the damage to the region's telecommunications systems caused by the powerful earthquake that rocked Taiwan on Tuesday.

Major banks and insurance companies reported normal operations.

Sources with the China Construction Bank (CCB) said the communications cutoff had not caused any damage to the bank's electronic services and all customer materials were protected by a backup system. Wang Zhaowen, spokesman of the Bank of China, said that no obvious affects were observed.

Sources from the Shanghai branches of the Bank of China and the CCB said that a spare pricing system could be put into operation if the cutoff affected the Reuters-Telerate pricing system, which has been used as a major reference in foreign exchange business.

There were also no problems with electronic futures deals as they are transmitted via satellite.

The damage to the fiber-optic cables has caused cyber-chaos in China. The servers of MSN and Yahoo in China were paralyzed and Alibaba, a major E-commerce firm, lost its trade connections with Europe and the United States.

Major telecommunication operators including China Netcom and China Telecom are trying to repair the cables but can not say when normal service will be resumed. A source with China Netcom said there was no great progress being made in repairing the cables.

Source: Xinhua