China's Nasdaq-style sci-tech innovation board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, known as the STAR Market, marked its seventh anniversary on Wednesday. During the past seven years, the bourse has evolved from an experimental "pilot field" into a trading house of high-tech enterprises, contributing to China's tech self-reliance.

As of Wednesday, the STAR Market has witnessed the listing of 611 companies with a combined market capitalization exceeding 15 trillion yuan ($2.21 trillion). Notably, the board has maintained research and development (R&D) intensity of nearly 13 percent for seven consecutive years, consistently leading all A-share sectors in research spending.

"The STAR Market, developed for seven years now, can be regarded as a model 'pilot field' to support China's technological development," Tian Lihui, dean of the Institute of Financial Development at Nankai University, told the Global Times on Wednesday, noting that the board possesses multiple unique advantages in terms of institutional design, industrial layout, and innovation ecosystem.

At the institutional level, the registration-based IPO reform has drastically shortened average listing time, giving the board a clear edge in approval efficiency. Industrially, hundreds of hard-tech firms have formed the core of tech replacements in sectors like semiconductors and biomedicine, which greatly benefit the formation of new quality productive forces in the country, Tian said.

In June, the STAR Market welcomed a new round of reforms, as the Shanghai Stock Exchange issued review guidelines on the application of the fifth set of listing standards on the STAR Market for AI large model enterprises, providing stronger support for the development of high-tech enterprises that have achieved breakthroughs in key emerging technologies.

Speaking at the 2026 Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai in June, Wu Qing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, noted that amid efforts to foster industries of the future, the commission will support hard-tech companies in quantum technology, biomanufacturing, embodied AI and other sectors to list on the STAR Market.

During the past seven years, most of the STAR Market's institutional innovations have been extended to the broader market, Dong Shaopeng, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Looking to the future, the STAR Market could further refine its market-oriented valuation and pricing mechanisms tailored to the characteristics of the hard-tech sector, continuously enhance the level of investor protection, and continue to cultivate and expand "patient capital" to enhance the market's stability and better serve technological innovation, Dong said.

The high-quality development of China's capital market is attracting foreign financial institutions, which are increasingly bullish on China's A-share market. Meng Lei, China equity strategist of UBS Securities, said in a research note sent to the Global Times on Wednesday that the trend of steadily improving earnings of many A-share companies are likely to sustain.

"Under the baseline scenario, we project that the earnings growth rate for all A-share companies will rise from 3.9 percent last year to 11 percent this year," Meng said.