The same stock could have different prices in different trading centers due to the lack of communication and information technologies. The trading of financial assets was also rare, with very few stocks and bonds listed in markets across China. Distributed by state-owned enterprises to employees, stocks did not represent ownership, but simply the promise of a dividend. However, the prices of equities were fixed by the Chinese government. In the 1980s, the issue and trading of securities in China restarted. The Exchange resumed operations in 1946 until the Communist revolution, and was liquidated by November 1950. The Shanghai Stock Exchange suspended operations on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese occupied the International Settlement. It was integrated with the New York Stock Exchange, with orders between the two cities realized via cable and radio in sixteen minutes in 1937. The Shanghai Stock Exchange was the largest equities market in Asia until the Communist revolution in 1949. Eventually, the two associations merged and formed the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 1928. Outside brokers formed another Stockbrokers Association in 1909 in Shanghai’s International Settlement. In 1904, the Association applied for company registration in Hong Kong and was renamed Shanghai Stock Exchange. In 1891, American, British and French businessmen founded the Shanghai Stock and Sharebrokers Association, the first stock trading organization in China.

Securities trading in Shanghai went back to the late 1860s, when the shares of local and regional companies were listed in business newspapers.

Situated midway down the Pacific Coast at the mouth of the Yangtze River, the port bustled with trade and capital flows. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Shanghai has been the most important financial center and cosmopolitan city of mainland China. Closed in 1950 after the Communist revolution, the Shanghai Stock Exchange restarts operations in December 1990, cementing the growth and development of capital markets in China.

Shanghai index