(Yicai) June 27 -- The China Securities Regulatory Commission will continue to keep the country's offshore listing channel smooth, according to the head of the watchdog's market supervision division.

A total of 158 companies completed offshore initial public offerings since the new offshore listing rules were implemented in March last year as of June 21, Wu Meng told Yicai at a press conference yesterday. Of them, 85 went public in Hong Kong and 73 in the United States, he added.

China recently published a policy document to promote the high-quality development of venture capital investment and address the challenge private equity investors and venture capitalists face in exiting their investments. 

The CSRC has been paying much attention to this issue and will continue to deepen the capital market's reform and opening-up to provide solid foundations for the resolution of the problem, Wu said.

In fact, the regulator will implement multiple measures to promote diversified exit channels, such as carrying out trials allowing PE and VC funds to allocate the shares they hold in listed companies to investors through non-trading transfer.

Pilot projects for PE funds' share transfer have already been carried out in regional equity markets in Beijing, Shanghai, Ningbo, and Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui provinces, Wu noted. PE funds have so far transferred CNY23.2 billion (USD3.2 billion) shares and pledged other CNY31.6 billion shares, which is conducive to further developing secondary funds, he added.

Secondary funds purchase existing interests or assets from primary private equity fund investors.

Editors: Shi Yi, Futura Costaglione