The Securities Regulatory Commission: expanding the scope of opening up!

China’s futures market has witnessed a new move in its opening-up. Recently, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced that, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Interim Measures for the Administration of Futures Trading of Domestic Specified Products Engaged in by Overseas Traders and Overseas Brokerage Institutions, an additional 14 futures and options contracts have been designated as domestic specified products.

Specifically, they include: Nickel futures and nickel options on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE); Paraxylene (PX) futures, bottle-grade polyester chip futures, short fiber futures, purified terephthalic acid (PTA) options, paraxylene (PX) options, bottle-grade polyester chip options, and short fiber options on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange (ZCE); Lithium carbonate futures and lithium carbonate options on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange (GFEX); and TSR 20 Rubber options, low-sulfur fuel oil options, and international copper options on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE).

This signifies that another 14 futures and options products are now open to participation by overseas traders and overseas brokerage institutions. With this addition, the number of domestic specified products has increased to 38.

One Analyst at Futures Company, holds that the CSRC’s decision to expand the scope of open products in China’s futures market marks that the opening-up of China’s futures market is moving into a new stage of higher quality, larger scale and accelerated opening, characterized by institutional opening-up and the cultivation of pricing influence.

Improving the Price Discovery Mechanism for the Global Nickel Industry

The newly opened products are highly concentrated in sectors where China boasts a huge consumer market or a complete industrial chain advantage, such as non-ferrous metals, chemicals and new energy materials.

In the non-ferrous metals sector, nickel futures have become the first taxed non-ferrous metal futures product on the SHFE to be directly opened to overseas investors. Meanwhile, the INE has achieved full coverage of options on its mature products. This marks a crucial step forward in the internationalization process of the SHFE, and is also an important measure for the exchange to serve the country’s high-level opening-up and enhance the pricing influence of bulk commodities.

As the first specified product of the SHFE, nickel is of vital strategic significance to industrial development and an indispensable basic metal material for emerging industries. As the world’s largest consumer and importer of nickel, and the second-largest producer, China has a solid industrial foundation, providing strong support for the opening-up of its futures market. Since its listing in 2015, nickel futures have effectively fulfilled their market functions, with close linkage between futures and spot prices. They have become an important benchmark for domestic spot trade pricing and are widely adopted by most industrial chain enterprises for risk management and trading activities.

Industry insiders note that advancing the opening-up of the nickel futures and options market responds to the long-standing appeals of industrial chain enterprises and industry associations. It helps elevate the risk management capacity of China’s non-ferrous metals industry, supports the construction of a modern industrial system, and attracts more domestic and overseas participants to engage in price formation, risk management and global resource allocation. While continuously enhancing the international influence of the "Shanghai Price", it will promote the improvement of the price discovery mechanism for the global nickel industry and strengthen the resilience and stability of the global nickel industrial chain.

A relevant official of the SHFE stated that the exchange is steadily advancing all preparatory work for the opening-up of nickel futures and options, as well as TSR 20 Rubber options, low-sulfur fuel oil options and international copper options. Going forward, the SHFE will further enrich the supply of internationalized products, improve the operation quality of the futures market and enhance its functional performance. Through a series of measures including optimizing business rules, strengthening market cultivation, deepening two-way opening-up, consolidating technical support and improving delivery service capacity, the exchange will actively attract various domestic and overseas market participants, continuously advance the internationalization of the futures market, effectively serve the development of the real economy, and steadily move toward the goal of building a "world-class exchange".

Promoting the Coordinated Opening-Up of the Polyester Industrial Chain

In the chemical sector, China possesses the world’s most complete polyester industrial chain. The newly designated domestic products cover core futures and options contracts of the polyester industrial chain on the ZCE, including paraxylene (PX) futures, bottle-grade polyester chip futures, short fiber futures, and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) options.

According to information obtained by the Financial Times from the ZCE, China’s polyester industry ranks first in the world in terms of scale, having formed the world’s most complete polyester industrial chain system. In 2025, China’s polyester production capacity reached 89.035 million tons, accounting for approximately 60% to 70% of the global total. Global virgin polyester fiber output (excluding other polyester types and recycled polyester) is projected to hit 71 million tons in 2025, with China’s market share exceeding 70%. The polyester sector boasts a diverse array of market players across the upstream, midstream and downstream, involving hundreds of enterprises engaged in production, trade, processing and other related industries, with a mature pattern of coordinated industrial chain development.

In recent years, impacted by factors such as the restructuring of global supply chains, price volatility of polyester products has intensified. Coupled with the accelerated overseas expansion of China’s polyester production capacity, enterprises are facing significantly mounting pressure from risk management, including cross-border price fluctuations and exchange rate volatility. The market’s demand for diversified risk management tools such as cross-border pricing and hedging has become increasingly urgent.

Previously, the ZCE had gradually piloted the opening-up of polyester sector products. Among them, PTA futures, as China’s first chemical futures product and a globally pioneering one, have maintained stable market operation and sustained functional performance since the introduction of overseas traders in 2018. On this basis, promoting the overall internationalization of the polyester sector and realizing the opening-up of all industrial chain products will help further improve the global polyester pricing system and better meet the risk management needs of domestic and overseas enterprises.

Xu Jien, Deputy General Manager of the Marketing Center of Yisheng Petrochemical, believes that the internationalization of the polyester sector, as an important part of the high-level opening-up of the futures market, is highly complementary to the existing polyester futures and options market in terms of operation mechanism and market function. It is conducive to optimizing the market investor structure, improving price discovery efficiency, facilitating the transformation of China’s polyester futures prices from a "China Price" to a "Global Price", and further enhancing the core competitiveness and international influence of China’s polyester industry in the global industrial chain.

Taking Lithium Carbonate Futures Prices Global

In the new energy sector, lithium carbonate futures and options on the GFEX have been included in the list of domestic specified products.

Lithium carbonate is a key raw material for cathode materials of lithium batteries, widely used in the production of power batteries and energy storage batteries. Since their listing in July 2023, lithium carbonate futures and options on the GFEX have maintained generally stable market operation, effectively performed their functions, and gained growing market influence, providing strong support for the high-quality development of the lithium battery industry.

According to the GFEX, China imports a large volume of lithium resources and occupies an important position in international lithium resource trade. Following the listing of GFEX lithium carbonate futures and options, transparent, fair and authoritative pricing benchmarks have been provided for spot trade. The pricing model of international lithium ore trade has begun to shift to one referencing lithium carbonate futures prices, effectively enhancing China’s influence in international lithium resource trade. At present, numerous overseas production and trading enterprises have taken lithium carbonate futures prices as an important pricing reference.

Industry insiders point out that the inclusion of lithium carbonate futures and options as specified products will enable domestic and overseas industrial enterprises to participate in the futures market more conveniently, providing risk management tools for global lithium battery enterprises. Lithium resource development features long construction cycles and large capital investment. Faced with price fluctuation risks, relevant enterprises can lock in development profits and stabilize operating returns through lithium carbonate futures and options. Meanwhile, industrial enterprises can conduct hedging, futures-spot trading and other operations via futures instruments to enhance their sustainable development capacity, take lithium carbonate futures prices global, thereby improving the global price discovery mechanism for lithium carbonate and further strengthening the international influence of China’s futures market.

A relevant official of the GFEX stated that in the follow-up, the exchange will ensure the implementation of lithium carbonate futures and options as specified products, continuously strengthen front-line supervision, optimize market services, and actively explore other approaches to opening-up. It will further elevate the level of opening-up, promote the better performance of functions by futures products such as lithium carbonate, and serve the high-quality development of the real economy.