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The meetings, attended by 140 officials and professionals from the CSRC branches, futures exchanges, the China Futures Monitoring Center and the China Futures Association, were regarded as the general mobilization call for the launch of the index futures expected in the second half of the year.

Jiang Yang, assistant to chairman of CSRC, said at the meeting that the securities watchdog will work on the five critical aspects with top priority on the current stage: first, to organize the relevant entities to thoroughly study the Futures Trade Administrative Regulation, disseminate and promote the regulation among investors; second, to improve market risk control methods and further develop the existing futures products; third, to strengthen supervision over futures companies; fourth, to prepare for the launch of the index futures; and fifth, to enforce the risk control work for futures firms and strictly guarantee a smooth process of application of the protection fund.

Jiang said that the steady development of the financial market has provided a solid base for the launch of the index futures. But he also stressed the importance of improvement in the supervision framework over the financial market as a whole. He said the futures market was smaller in scale and lacking variety in products, and supervisors should fully understand the particular features and adjust their policies to better fit the market.