(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-08-13 14:45

BEIJING -- Chinese share prices hit new high in morning session on Monday with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rising to 4.839.95 points, 82.48 points higher than the previous close.

Banks and petrochemical stocks led the advance. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China rose 4.04 percent to 6.96 yuan per share. The Bank of China soared 4.99 percent to 6.10 yuan per share.

SinoPec climbed 4.75 percent in the morning to stand at 15.87 yuan per share. Analysts said that the ICBC and SinoPec pushed the benchmark index up more than 30 points in the first half-day session.

The Shenzhen Component Index on the small stock exchange market dropped 174.54 points to close at 16,148.9 points in the morning session.

The trading turnover on the two bourses is more than 127 billion yuan (US$16.78 billion) in the morning. Around 620 stocks rose up while 930-plus stocks dropped in the session.

China's consumer price index rose 5.6 percent in July compared with a year earlier, nearly twice the official three percent target for 2007. Analysts expected the high CPI figure to bring more tightening measures.

The figure, however, did not bring much panic among the investors as it met the previous expectation of the market. The Shanghai Component Index saw slight drop after the figure was released in the morning and then quickly picked up the rising trend.

Amid panic brought by mortgage crisis in the United States, the global stock market responded with big slump last week. But the Chinese market, which remains closed to a large extent, continued its upward trend.

The total market value of stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses rose to around 21.15 trillion yuan (US$2.79 trillion) last Thursday, even higher than the gross domestic products in 2006.