The China Securities Regulatory Commission published a notice to its regional offices, the Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing stock exchanges and key market institutions setting out a work programme to promote high-quality development of the real estate investment trusts (REITs) market. The package focuses on supporting the stable growth of commercial real estate REITs, expanding market supply and secondary-market functionality, improving review and registration arrangements, and tightening risk prevention across the REITs lifecycle. The notice calls for clearer, market-based admission arrangements for commercial real estate REITs, faster issuance and listing for policy-aligned commercial assets, and more use of portfolios of similar or complementary assets, including cross-sector asset integration, to improve scale and diversification. It supports participation by bank and insurance asset management companies and an orderly expansion of eligible sponsors. To broaden the market, the CSRC seeks to refine follow-on issuance and market-based pricing arrangements, support listed REITs to grow through asset purchases, follow-on offerings and mergers, and facilitate private enterprises using REITs to monetise existing assets. Secondary-market measures include expanding REITs indices and index-linked products, supporting eligible public funds to include REITs in their investment scope, studying REITs exchange-traded funds, encouraging long-term institutional investors such as insurance, social security and pension funds to participate, and promoting inclusion of REITs in the Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect programme. The notice also sets expectations to standardise offering practices and valuation and pricing, strengthen disclosure (including interim disclosure for major events) and trading surveillance, improve the transparency and efficiency of review and registration with stronger quality and integrity controls, study more flexible yield requirements linked to market benchmarks such as risk-free rates, monitor use of proceeds, and enhance full-chain supervision from due diligence and pricing through trading, asset operations and disclosure.

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