Mainland Chinese securities don't use ticker letters like AAPL. Every stock, fund, bond and index gets a six-digit code, and the first digits tell you nearly everything. Learn five prefixes and you can read most codes on sight.
The five prefixes that cover most stocks
- 60x → Shanghai Main Board. 600, 601, 603 and 605 hold large caps: banks, energy, insurers, consumer staples.
- 688 → Shanghai STAR Market. Semiconductors, biotech and hard tech. The daily limit is ±20%.
- 000–003 → Shenzhen Main Board. 002 and 003 were the former SME board, merged in 2021.
- 300 → Shenzhen ChiNext. Growth companies with a ±20% daily limit.
- 920 → Beijing Stock Exchange. Small innovative firms with a ±30% daily limit. Older BSE codes began with 43 or 83–87.
Funds, bonds and indices
Exchange-traded funds in Shanghai usually start with 51, 56 or 58. In Shenzhen they start with 15 or 16. Convertible bonds cluster around 11x (Shanghai) and 12x (Shenzhen). Shenzhen indices start with 399. Shanghai-side index codes reuse the 000xxx space. That's why 000001 can mean either a Shenzhen bank or the SSE Composite Index, depending on the market suffix.
Off-exchange fund codes
Mainland mutual funds sold through banks and apps have six-digit codes too, and many sit in the low 000xxx range. 000093, for example, has been used for a bond-fund share class. The code alone doesn't tell you the instrument. The system it lives in does.
Hong Kong is different
HKEX uses up to five digits, often shown with leading zeros (00700). 00001–07999 are mostly Main Board securities, 08xxx is GEM, and the 2800/3000/9000 ranges hold many ETFs. Hong Kong has no daily price limit.
Pro tip: always check the suffix. .SH/.SS means Shanghai, .SZ Shenzhen, .BJ Beijing, .HK Hong Kong.