China's Pensions Poised for Stock Market Play

(Beijing) – Two provincial governments have taken what appear to be the first, cautious steps toward opening the nation's 3.5 trillion yuan family of public and quasi-public pension funds to stock market investing.

Governments in Shandong and Guangdong recently became the first to revamp pension fund investment practices in ways that apparently conform to a plan rolled out by the central government's Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.