The Chinese capital market, despite its relative short history in its modern form, has experienced a tremendous growth and is now the second largest in the world. Due to China’s tight capital controls, the development of its capital market has mostly been isolated from and hence not been well understood by the rest of the world. Yet, this state of isolation is bound to change substantially as China becomes more integrated into the global financial system. In this paper, we provide an empirical overview of the Chinese capital market: its structure, development and main empirical characteristics.