If you have been in the Listed Company Department of the Shanghai Securities Exchange (SSE) for 4 years, certainly you would envy your colleagues who joined the SSE one year later, since they need not suffer the annual torture on April 30, the deadline of listed companies' reports. The employees used to manually input a big pool of data, which has been done by XBRL in recent years, a new data management technology.

XBRL has gained high reputation in the industry, whereas it is just an unknown term for the public. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is simply a language standard based on Internet to produce and transfer business reports. By tagging and classifying the data in the business and financial reports, the XML-based XBRL can make the computers read the reports. Moreover, by the internal mechanism of guidance, explanation and verification, the institutions issuing and submitting reports can, according to unified caliber, produce users-required reports without omissions or miscalculations, and analyze and compare the reports with the aid of computers.

German. Bai Shuo, SSE Assistant to General Manager and General Engineer, attended the 15th XBRL International Conference hosted by XBRL Europe on Jun. 4-5 in Munich on behalf of China.

Back from Germany, Bai introduced the application, promotion and prospects of XBRL technology both at home and abroad in an interview with the International Finance News.

At the Conference, the two taxonomies independently developed by the SSE had been widely acknowledged by members of the XBRL International. Moreover, the SSE's efforts in XBRL technology development, application and promotion won high praises.

The SSE, one of the earliest users of XBRL technology in the world, set a good example in the global promotion of XBRL. At the beginning of 2004, 50 Shanghai-based listed companies were selected by the SSE as the pilot units to submit the abstracts of annual reports of 2003 by filling in standardized template, yet 118 companies participated in this project. At the beginning of 2005, all SSE-listed companies used XBRL for submission of full texts of their annual reports."China was the only country to make such accomplishment at that time", Bai smiled with pride for China's leading position in this field.

The SSE, approved officially to be a member of the XBRL International in April 2004, became the first unit that joins XBRL International in China. The SSE takes the lead in the development and application of XBRL technology both at home and abroad. In September 2005, the China Listed Company Information Disclosure Taxonomies, independently developed by the SSE, became the first taxonomy in China acknowledged by the XBRL International. In June 2006, the China Fund Company Information Disclosure Taxonomies, also independently developed by the SSE, was the first of its kind ever acknowledged by the XBRL International in the international XBRL application field.

Bai stated that XBRL's successful promotion in China owed to the above-mentioned promotion strategy of selecting some enterprises as pilot units, which tests the bugs of the XBRL reporting software and invites the enterprise participants to take the initiative to enjoy the advantage of XBRL.

With the success of the pilot project, the SSE plans to promote XBRL in a comprehensive way. The SSE realized the "whole market coverage" of XBRL instances, including all listed companies' XBRL data, and the "full text disclosure" of their periodical information, consisting of full text data of the financial statements of all SSE-listed companies rather than abstracts only. All this facilitates investors to compare not only the historical financial data of a single listed company but also the financial data "collection" of different companies, thus meeting the demands of various customers and enjoying high utilization value over the world.

Besides, technologies have been adopted to "mineralize" listed companies'work, with an aim to lessen their burdens and provide them with an easy access to the emerging electronic information technology.

Moreover, China has been promoting XBRL's application in various industries. The China Securities Regulatory Commission and the China Finance Standardization Technical Committee Securities Sub-Committee have made great efforts to regulate relevant industry standards and state standards related to XBRL. Meanwhile, initiatives have been taken to research and promote the application of XBRL by ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Finance, the People's Bank of China, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the State Administration of Taxation and the General Administration of Customs of People's Republic of China.