I. Background, history and application

As securities investment fund market grows constantly, fund management companies and funds increasingly expand, with higher requirements for fund information disclosure, especially its electronic disclosure. However, such manual reading formats as PDF, Word and Excel are still adopted for the information disclosure. The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) initiated the formulation of XBRL taxonomy for fund information disclosure in 2005, to set a unified standard and a role model for the electronic disclosure of fund information. In 2006, the taxonomy was completed and “acknowledged” by the XBRL International later.

Upon great support by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and for the further application of XBRL in the fund industry, the SSE’s application for the formulation of China’s Electronic Information Disclosure Standard for Funds (i.e. the industry standard) was unanimously approved at the National Conference of China Finance Standardization Technical Committee Securities Sub-Committee (CFSTCSSC) on April 12, 2007. In late May, the CFSTCSSC Secretariat required the SSE to launch the formulation in an official letter. The SSE has asked its Information Center to formulate the Electronic Information Disclosure Standard for Funds.

The crucial part in the industry standard is the formulation of taxonomy, which should be based on the taxonomy acknowledged by the XBRL International in 2006. According to the latest development of the fund industry in recent years, China’s current laws and regulations for information disclosure, the new accounting standards for business enterprises and the updated international XBRL specifications, a brand-new Chinese XBRL taxonomy for fund information disclosure has been created. In late May, the CSRC stated that the taxonomy should be issued in the form of the CSRC’s Taxonomy.

The taxonomy has been widely promoted in the fund industry. The Investment Fund Supervision Department and the Information Center of the CSRC held a mobilization meeting on application and promotion in late January 2008. At the meeting, seven pilot fund companies were selected to launch their 1st quarter trial reports, which turned out to be desirable. In late June, the Department and the Center held a meeting for the reporting at the second stage, requiring that all the fund companies should launch their 2nd quarter trial reports, and the seven pilot companies should launch trial reporting of the abstracts of their semi-annual reports. At present, all the preparations have been started, and relevant testing is under way.

II. Technique

The taxonomy is formulated for public disclosure of fund information in accordance with XBRL 2.1, FRTA 1.0 and the latest international technical specifications. For specific technical route, please refer to the SSE’s internationally acknowledged taxonomy for listed companies and funds.

(I). Framework Design

The taxonomy framework is designed in light of the whole content of information disclosure. Based on the internal relations in the content of the fund information disclosure and with the combination of elements describing information of the same kind, independent sub-modules have been formed. The framework is as follows:

The above taxonomy framework consists of two parts -- primary terms and non-primary terms. The former includes the sub-module of Core Primary Terms and the sub-module of Regulatory Terms (vacant for future expansion); the latter includes five sub-modules -- Global Common Document, Fund General Introduction, Management Report, Important Events and Accounts Report. The main content of information disclosure described by the sub-modules is as follows:

Global Common Document: bulletin names, delivery dates, important clues, prefaces, explanations, information service, files for reference and etc.

Fund General Introduction: introduction of funds, for instance: fund names, fund abbreviations, fund operation modes, fund codes and other basic fund information; fund-related organization information, for instance: fund mangers’ information, fund trustees’ information, information of fund units offering agencies, information of law and accounting firms; fund investment, such as fund investment goals, investment concepts, investment directions, investment scopes, investment strategies, investment restrictions, investment decision and etc.

Management Report: import announcements; fund managers’ reports; fund trustees’ reports and so on.

Important Events: fund risks revelation; fund errors disposal; important events related to funds and the like.

Accountants Report: relevant information.

Core Primary Terms: major financial indicators, net asset value performance and proceeds distribution; fund expenses information; balance sheets; profit statements; statement of changes in owners’ equity (net value of fund); accounting statements’ annotations; portfolio reports, portfolio reports’ annotations and etc.

Regulatory Terms: vacant at present, but it will be used by information disclosure obligators to report the non-public regulatory terms to regulators, especially primary terms.

(II). Other Important Technical Elements

Namespace: in line with the international customs, this taxonomy puts all the technical documents (including Discoverable Taxonomy Sets, DTS) on the XBRL China's official website (www.xbrl-cn.org, its updating is under way) and sets the domain name as basic namespaces.

Element Naming: the elements are named by Chinese Pinyin with the initial of each pinyin capitalized; every element’s name should be exclusive; otherwise, the parent node table name should be added before the newly-designed element name as prefix (namely, the initial of each pinyin) in abbreviation; the elements in three financial statements and major financial indicator table are privileged to be non-prefix; the length of the element names should be no more than 256 characters.

Element Identifier: the elements should be identified and positioned exclusively by its ID, with the naming rule of “sub-module identifier _element name”.

Data Types: this taxonomy uses the data types defined in XBRL 2.1 Specification as follows: stringItemType, dateItemType, monetaryItemType, sharesItemType, integerItemType, decimalItemType.

5.  Context and Unit Elements in the Instance Documents

Many element instances in the instance documents have some background features of time, funds, etc. These features can be described through a series of context elements in the instance documents.

Respectively, the time type identifiers of the instant type and duration type data are “instant” and “duration”. And the related fund codes are defined in the entity elements of context elements.

One context element might be related to several element instances, while one element instance is just related to one context element. For example, the “summation” element might be related to different context elements to represent the value at the beginning of the year as well as that at the end of the year. The element of tuple type has no relation to any context element.

The context elements should comply with the naming rule of “C_ time type identifier_ time”.

MonetaryItemType, sharesItemType, integerItemType, decimalItemType elements should be connected with a specific unit element via unitRef attribute to define such information as the monetary item type, current unit and share unit of the elements. One unit element might be related to many element instances.

III. Information on Compliance with China Accounting Standards

The taxonomy complies with the new accounting standards, completely meeting the requirements of fund information disclosure under the standards.

Since the fund companies implemented the new accounting standards from July 1, 2007, the taxonomy has been adjusted with 707 elements added and 34 names, 43 Chinese labels, 12 types changed, and the hiberarchy relations of some elements have been adjusted in line with the implementation of relevant content and format guidelines, report compilation rules as well as practical methods for the new accounting standards in the information disclosure (especially the template of fund information disclosure formulated by the CSRC based on the new accounting standards).

Based on the new accounting standards, the taxonomy’s implementation has been proven to be desirable in the quarterly reports of the first and second quarters of 2008.

IV. Information on the Compliance with the International Specifications

The taxonomy has been formulated and revised under the XBRL 2.1 and FRTA1.0 specifications. After the UBMatrix tool, approved by the XBRL International, verifies the modules of the taxonomy, no error or warning has been found.

V. Information on the Formulation and Maintenance

In 2006, the SSE completed the formulation of the XBRL taxonomy of funds, which was acknowledged by the XBRL International later. With the rapid growth of the fund industry, the SSE has organized a formulation team to comb and improve the system based on the original work and formulate the taxonomy complying with the current requirements of information disclosure and the application in the fund industry, since the application for the formulation of the industry standard was approved in April 2007.

In the process of formulation, the team has made reference to 40-odd laws and regulations as well as 1000-odd documents of fund information disclosure, and compiled 1741 fields (including 1177 financial fields) and 20 kinds of articulations.

In order to promote the taxonomy’s application, it was specified that the CSRC should issue and maintain the taxonomy in the form of its “taxonomy”, and the CRSC organized the taxonomy work group in late May. The group combed and improved the system of the taxonomy again. Meanwhile, the group worked out a supporting template of fund information disclosure, which would be adopted together with the taxonomy.

When the taxonomy is issued and maintained, emphasis should be put on stability of its version to facilitate its application. The priority should be given to compatibility with previous version when updating the taxonomy: whether the new taxonomy can verify the original instance documents or not.

If there are some common and tiny changes in the taxonomy, it should be directly revised and issued, instead of updating its version. However, if there are lots of changes, it is necessary to update the taxonomy under the following rules:

The original taxonomy should be maintained to ensure usability of the original instance documents; the new taxonomy should set new namespace, and the date tags in the original namespace should be changed in line with the new issue date, while the date tags in all the files should adopt the date of the new version.

VI. Information on the Application Systems

This taxonomy emphasizes openness and non-monopolization in its application and promotion to set the favorable application mode for reference. The CSRC and the SSE will not provide or specify any application system, so that all the reporting companies could, according to their own needs, choose software companies to develop relevant application systems, which could generate the instance documents in line with the taxonomy as well as the reporting requirements.