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The China Securities Regulatory Commission has given investors until Friday to comment on revised listing rules, a sign that initial public offerings of stock could resume soon. After a surge in IPOs in 2006 and 2007, there have been no new issues since September. They were halted by the government when the market got rocky, a way to limit new supply that could hurt existing shares. Meanwhile, the regulatory commission, along with the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, has targeted share manipulation, corporate embezzlement, insider trading and pyramid schemes as it works to combat a widespread perception among retail investors that the market is rigged. After wild gyrations in China's stock markets hammered investors' portfolios and battered their confidence in the past few years, few have been willing to invest for the long term. The government is determined to make the capital markets a 'facilitator' of the economy and is 'soberly aware' of the related need to make it attractive to individual investors, Shang Fulin, chairman of the regulatory commission, known as the CSRC, said last month. The Shanghai Composite Index, the benchmark for the domestic market, rose sixfold in just over two years, starting in mid-2005, before a yearlong drop starting in late 2007 that left it about 70% lower. It is up 52% in 2009 and is up 60% in six months, raising concern that the boom-and-bust cycle will be repeated. While the sums lost in alleged scams are a pittance compared with the $3 trillion in market value lost in the 2007-2008 swoon, such allegations contribute to investors' uncertainty about the market's legitimacy. The CSRC says it has helped prosecutors build a case alleging stock manipulation against an electronics tycoon who was once among China's richest men. It also helped topple heads of three brokerage firms on suspicion they engaged in unspecified share-market irregularities. Shanghai police say they are holding a man who allegedly parlayed a single dinner with a well-known U.S. investor into a reputation as a local market 'oracle' and bilked clients of $2.9 million. In 2007, when the Shanghai Composite was powering its way skyward, the man, who called himself Jian Fan, paid $53,000 at an auction to have a private dinner with Jim Rogers, a legend among China's investors along with his former investment partner, George Soros. In an interview at the time, the Shanghai man claimed that Mr. Rogers endorsed his plan to offer investment seminars. Now, police say the 35-year-old sitting in a Shanghai jail is really Han Jinsong. He faces allegations that the seminar program he created was a front for an unregistered money-management firm used to cheat 200 people, a police spokesman says. One 80-year-old Shanghai investor who attended the seminars says he lost around $3,000. No specific charges have been made public, and Mr. Han couldn't be reached for comment. Mr. Rogers said he didn't know about the allegations until a reporter called, and he hopes his role wasn't exaggerated. 'I haven't seen, spoken or communicated with him since that night,' Mr. Rogers said. The electronics tycoon facing allegations of stock manipulation, Huang Guangyu, founder of retailing giant Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd., also couldn't be reached. Nor could Wang Yi, a former vice chairman of the CSRC who faces bribery allegations disclosed by the Communist Party in February when it ousted him from its ranks. People charged with crimes in China rarely are given a chance to publicly respond, and court proceedings often are closed. Ahead of the impending new stock offerings, regulators have told financial Web sites to eliminate any misleading advertising, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange has pledged regular reports about what it is doing to supervise the market. As stocks moved higher in 2006 and 2007, investors piled into new offerings. More money was raised in mainland China IPOs in those two years than anywhere else in the world -- some $82.5 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Now, 32 issuers have been approved to sell shares valued at as much as 80 billion yuan ($11.7 billion), with another 300 companies waiting for regulatory approval to sell shares, according to a tally by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In addition to revised listing requirements designed to alter the way IPOs are priced, Beijing has indicated it is considering other plans, such as launching a growth-enterprises market for smaller companies to raise money, adding new derivatives products and giving foreign fund managers slightly more access to Chinese shares. James T. Areddy 
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