"Global stock exchanges are stepping up efforts to recruit Chinese companies," said Zuo Xiaolei, chief economist with Galaxy Securities.

"To survive and make profits," Zuo said, "stock exchanges have to list more companies."

Greifeld visited China late in 2005 soon after becoming Nasdaq president. Nine Chinese companies listed on Nasdaq in 2006 and six more have listed in the past three months.

"China is our fastest-growing market outside the United States. We are optimistic about the number of Chinese companies that can list on Nasdaq," said Xu Guangxun, Nasdaq's chief representative in China.

Eighty-one Chinese firms raised US$20.5 billion from overseas initial public offerings (IPO) in 2005.

In 2006, 86 Chinese firms raised 44 billion dollars from overseas IPOs and accounted for 19 percent of the 2006 world total.

These statistics explain why New York, Nasdaq, Toronto, London, Singapore, Tokyo and other giant stock exchanges are flocking into China.

"Chinese firms have become a new power in the world capital markets," said Yuan Gangming, a well-known economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"China must speed up the development of its domestic capital markets," he said.

Yuan's warning echoed a report released by the Research Center for China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).

Too many high-grade Chinese enterprises listing overseas will slow the development of the domestic capital market and prevent Chinese people from benefiting from the companies' growth.

Meanwhile, listing overseas could be risky because it will expose companies to the risk of a takeover, the report said.

CSRC is encouraging big State-owned enterprises to list domestically or in both overseas and domestic markets. It has called on Chinese companies that have listed overseas to come back and issue shares on the mainland.

China Mobile and Bank of Communication have filed "return" applications and PetroChina is also making preparations.

In 2006, as the Chinese stock market swung out of a four-year bearish ordeal, 65 companies listed, raising some 17.1 billion dollars.

"China's stock markets have done well recently," said a senior official with the Shanghai Stock Exchange, "although there are certain problems."

For instance, China has almost 20 million enterprises and about 10,000 of them qualify for listing. However, complicated and time-consuming red tape have kept most of them outside the stock market.

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