China's soybean market official open to foreign traders

Eight soybean-related futures and options, including No 1 Soybean, No 2 soybean, soybean meal and soybean oil, are officially open to foreign traders at the Dalian Commodity Exchange on Monday in Dalian, Liaoning province.

"It is the first time for the DCE to introduce overseas traders in the full soybean commodities," said Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission, in a video message.

Fang said that an increasing number of domestic and overseas companies have begun to directly use Chinese future prices to carry out basis trading and enterprises, which makes production overseas also take advantage of China's market information to adjust production plans in a timely manner.

China is a major production area of global non-GMO soybeans and major marketing area of GMO soybeans.

According to Yan Shaoming, general manager of the DCE, opening-up will help link the global soybean production, processing and trade systems more closely, give full play to China's advantages of its super-large market size, and transmit in a timely manner the market trend information of China through its future pricing.

"It will also strengthen the internal impetus of the global soybean industry entities to arrange production and operation by more actively referring to the Chinese market," said Yan.

It will better ensure the global and China's grain and oil security, and help the global oil and oil-seed companies to better avoid the risk of price fluctuations, thus stabilizing the benefits of transnational operations, he added.

Soybean-related futures had been among the first kinds of future varieties introduced on the DCE since its establishment in 1993. So far, the DCE has made 11 varieties and tools including iron ore futures open to overseas traders.