Chinese investors have showed great enthusiasm to invest in the nation's first overseas equities fund, the China Securities Journal reported on Thursday.

China Southern Fund Management Co. Ltd. raised more than 15 billion yuan (US$2 billion), the scheduled sales scale, when it started subscriptions for its equities QDII (qualified domestic institutional investors) fund on Wednesday.

The fund management firm said in a statement that it will stop receiving subscriptions from Thursday even though the subscription period was scheduled to be open until September 28.

China Southern Fund Management said it had filed an application to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to increase the fund sales scale.

Investors' keenness to invest in the international equities markets shows they want to diversify securities holdings when risks start to build on the red-hot domestic stock markets, analysts said.

China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has soared more than 93.3 percent since the beginning of the year and stood at 5,172.62 points at the close of trading on Wednesday.

The firm has said it will operate in the markets of 48 countries and regions, from which the ten most valuable markets will be carefully selected for key investment.

Currently the ten markets include the developed markets of the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Italy, as well as the emerging markets of Russia, India, Brazil, Malaysia and the Republic of Korea.

The equities QDII fund has given local investors opportunities to cash in on the mature markets in developed countries as well as fast-growing ones in the new emerging markets, according to Guosen Securities.

China is to experience a QDII fund sales peak as China AMC, Harvest Fund Management and China International Fund Management will launch their QDII fund products and other fund firms will soon get regulatory approval to launch QDII funds, the newspaper said.

(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2007)