In order to fulfill the "Electronic Standards of Listed Companies' Information Disclosure" of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, SSE has actively promoted innovations in the disclosure of listed companies' information by successfully employing the international advanced standard Extensible Business Reporting Language(XBRL) in the disclosure of 2003 Annual Report Abstracts,  the 2004 First Quarter Reports, semi-annual Report Abstracts, and both the  abstracts and full texts of the annual reports, thus taking on a leading role both at home and abroad.

Guaranteed accuracy and reliability of listed companies' data from the source

With the expansion of China's securities market and widening of its financial sector, domestic and foreign investors are paying more and more attention to the financial and management status of listed companies. This has created a higher demand for public disclosure of information on listed companies.

Prior to utilizing the Electronic Standards of Listed Companies' Information Disclosure and the XBRL Standard, all the files for information disclosure were compiled in PDF or Word format, similar to picture files which only presented the contents for vision-reading but not allow for the usage of computer programs to automatically acquire the data. Therefore, investors, securities regulatory departments, research institutions and  information vendors all confronted the same problems when using the listed companies' information disclosed by SSE, that is, duplication in data inputing and data quality.

XBRL is the application of the standard language XML in the field of information exchange of financial reports. The Electronic Standards of Listed Companies'Information Disclosure, taking XBRL as its technical standard, can achieve automatic reconciliation processing of data in financial statements by unifying the language of the data and the remarks on the statements. It provides an effective technical way for the listed companies to disclose their information accurately and less omissions. It can guarantee accuracy and reliability of listed companies'data from the source and has far-reaching implications with regards to the quality of the information disclosed.

Gradual acceleration in the overall application of XBRL

At the end of 2002, The China Securities Regulatory Commission organized personnel from the SSE, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and relevant software company to conduct research on the XBRL standard which emerged from the area of international commercial reporting and to draft the Electronic Standards of Listed Companies'Information Disclosure. The Standards have now been examined and approved by China Finance Standardization Technical Committee Securities.

In October 2003, Geng Liang, Governor of SSE with his delegation, took part in the 43rd meeting of WFE in the United States and its annual meeting in New York , where the major subject was the introduction of the XBRL.  In November 2004, Secretary-General of the WFE attended the meeting held in Brussels by the International Accounting Standards Committee on the topic of XBRL. At this annual meeting in Brussels , the two representatives of the US Securities Exchange Commission introduced their experience of using XBRL. The influence of XBRL in the world stock market greatly caught the attention of the SSE leaders. Therefore, SSE's Governor, Geng Liang and President, Zhu CongJiu instigated and successfully deployed plans to establish a special working group of listed companies'information disclosure as an attachment to the CSRC standard constitution working group, thus accelerating the application and promotion of information disclosure in SSE.

In light of the fact that the XBRL, the newest international technique, has never been previously used by our securities industry and in order to fully verify the feasibility of XBRL, SSE's Vice President, Zhou Qinye, and Assistant to President, Bai Shuo have presided over several discussion meetings on the schemes and made full research and dialogue on the work related to the schemes. Meanwhile, SSE has held a conference to discuss the application of XBRL in listed companies' information disclosure, widely listening and researching the opinions and proposals from domestic and overseas experts including experts from the Institute of Chinese Academy of Science, PWC and FACTIVA. Finally, they have worked out the policy of "advances step by step, and experiments in small areas then in larger areas", that is, firstly conducting experiments on it then advancing it fully and experimenting on abstracts first before advancing to the full text of the financial reports.  

Under the guidance of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and with assistance from all the different fields, SSE has applied the XBRL standard on the whole process of information disclosure of the 2003 annual report abstracts, the 2004 first quarter reports, semi-annual report abstracts, and both the abstracts and full texts of annual reports of 2004. The results have been successful.

Within the framework of the Standards, the application of XBRL in promoting innovation of the Electronic Standards of Listed Companies' Information Disclosure effectively enhances the quality of information disclosure and the accuracy and liability of the listed companies' data. In addition, abiding by the international standards in the domestic listed companies'information disclosure can enable data exchanging and sharing with other international stock markets, which will enhance the fame and outward image of our domestic stock market.  

Enhance Intercommunion with International Organizations  

With the full implementation of the Electronic Standards of Listed Companies'Information Disclosure, the Shanghai Stock Exchange enhances intercommunion with XBRL and the related organizations.

First of all, the SSE invited the XBRL international organization to evaluate the project of listed companies'information disclosure based on XBRL. In July 2004, Walter, the former chairman of the XBRL was invited to conduct this evaluation.

Secondly, the SSE enhanced the international intercommunion and has successfully held a Seminar on XBRL's Application in Chinese Securities. In August 2004, the SSE hosted the seminar. The experts present had extensive and profound dialogue on several aspects of the subject, such as the actuality of XBRL's development and application, the progress and detailed issues of establishing the XBRL-CN organization, the drafting and implementation of the Standard, the introduction of XBRL's technical standards, the problems which may rise in the application of XBRL in China and the resolutions, the cases of XBRL overseas, the software of XBRL and demos of analysis tools.

Thirdly, the SSE publicized the experiences of listed companies' information disclosure, and impelled XBRL's application in Hong Kong . In March 2005, the Information Fair of "XBRL's Global Trend and Its Influence on Announced Standards of the Regulatory Institutions in Hong Kong" was held in Hong Kong . Experts of SSE were invited to attend the fair and they played an important role in the promotion of XBRL's application in Hong Kong .

The realization of ability of complete search of listed companies' databases everywhere

XBRL solved the important and complicated technical problem by standardizing and unifying the language of financial data, which allowed the searches of listed companies data bases available anywhere. Shanghai stock exchange publicized the search function of SSE 50 index component companies based on the Electronic Standards of Listed Companies'Information Disclosure(the Standards) on its outer website on August 3, 2004, where investors can search online for the detailed data of fundamental information, major financial data, balance sheet, profit distribution, cash flow sheet, etc. of listed companies. In addition, related XBRL data files can also be downloaded from the website of the stock exchange and with some software tool, it is easy to pick up the data from the data file for further analysis, which in the past was exclusive to some professionals or investment consultative companies.

To date, SSE has stored certain XBRL data of  companies listed in Shanghai. This information includes the 2003 annual report abstracts, the 2004 first quarter reports, semi-annual report abstracts, and both the abstracts and full texts of annual reports. Investors can compare account subject trend and other aspects of different companies with these XBRL data to command the financial status and management of listed companies. This helps to enhance the analytic capability, self-protection and confidence of the investors both at home and abroad.