China's stock markets continued their rise on Wednesday with news that investors opened more than 900,000 new stock accounts for China's A-share exchanges in the last four working days, more than the total number in 2005.

On Wednesday alone, the number of new accounts in the A-share Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges registered 252,000, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the state securities watchdog.

The new accounts in A-share stock markets totaled 850,000 in 2005.

The first three months of this year saw 4.79 million new accounts opened, a 56-percent increase from the 3.08 million in the whole of 2006, according to previous statistics.

Investors are still upbeat about the current bullish equity markets and more people are investing in stocks as their prime choice of investment, analysts say.

Analysts said the excess liquidity had provided strong growth momentum for the equity markets. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed at a 12th record high of 3,612.40 points on Wednesday, edging up 0.01 percent from the previous close, with turnover coming at 168.658 billion yuan.

The Component Index on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange closed at 10,401.62 points, up 112.62 points from the previous close. The turnover reached 100.569 billion yuan.

Source: Xinhua