After a wave of initial public offerings in recent years, the total market value of stocks listed on two major Chinese stock exchanges surpassed the country's GDP for the first time on Thursday.

At the end of the Thursday session, the combined value of stocks on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange grew past the nation's 21.087 trillion yuan ($2.77 trillion) GDP for 2006, according to data from the China Securities Journal.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange ended the Thursday session up 1.95 percent to 4,754.09 points while the Shenzhen Stock Exchange rose 1.51 percent to 1,38.87.

The value of Chinese stocks has increased by more than six times in the last two years. The stocks' value on July 28, 2005 was about 3 trillion yuan and broke through the 20 trillion yuan barrier on August 3 this year.

Since the start of 2007, the total value of listed stocks in both exchanges has doubled from 10 trillion yuan to 20 trillion.

China