A total of 1,517 companies went public on the stock markets of the mainland by the end of September, official media said.

The overall volume at Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses was around 4 trillion yuan at the end of 2002, ranking China the fourth largest in Asia, data furnished by a delegation of the central financial authorities to the ongoing communist party congress showed.

China''s equity markets raised a total of 425.04 billion yuan ($56.7 billion) through initial and secondary public offers in the first nine months of this year, surpassing the combined funds from 2002 to 2006, the China Securities Journal reported.

In September alone, money raised through 15 initial public offers (IPO) amounted to 149 billion yuan, or half of the money raised through IPOs so far this year. China Shenhua, the nation''s biggest coal producer, raised 66.58 billion yuan from IPO, refreshing the 58.05 billion yuan record set by the China Construction Bank.

China securities regulatory commission chairman Shang Fulin cited shareholder reform initiated in 2005 to float non-tradeable state owned shares, tighter market supervision on insider trading and the clean-up of the securities sector as factors leading to the bull run on the stock market.

He said the stock market is playing a better part acting as a barometer of china''s economy.

Institutional investors control 46 per cent of the market equity, reports quoted Shang as saying.

The market was also driven by sufficient liquidity, rapid economic growth and the return of heavyweight state-owned enterprises from overseas bourses to domestic share markets.