CSMAR: China Stock Market & Accounting Research (licensed)

Licensed: not exercised here

CSMAR is a paid licensed product (GTA Information Technology), so it carries no provenance badge: the access path below was not run in this session (no CSMAR / GTA institutional credentials were available). The page documents the access route and the gotchas; treat it as unverified until someone exercises it through a licensed account. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

CSMAR (China Stock Market & Accounting Research, from GTA Information Technology) is the most widely used vendor database for Chinese capital markets: daily and intraday stock prices and returns for the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, listed-firm financial statements, ownership and shareholder data, fund holdings, corporate governance, and a range of market-microstructure and specialty modules. It is the China-market analog to the CRSP/Compustat core and is the standard source for studies of Chinese listed firms. A paper we distill uses it: Hansman, Hong, Jiang, Liu & Meng draw stock prices and trading data, book-to-market, semiannual fund holdings, and top-ten-shareholder ownership from CSMAR.

• Cost: licensed, institutional subscription. No general free tier.
• Vendor: GTA Information Technology (Shenzhen).
• Coverage: A-share, B-share, and (in places) H-share listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges; prices from the early 1990s, with financials, ownership, fund, and governance modules of varying start dates.

Access (when licensed)

• Through the CSMAR/GTA platform or WRDS. Tables are downloaded from the CSMAR web platform (module-by-module query and CSV export) or, where the institution licenses it, through WRDS. Check which route your institution provides.
• Modular schema. CSMAR is organized into databases/modules (trading, financial statements, ownership, funds, governance, etc.); an extract is a set of fields from one module for a firm list over a date range, keyed by the six-digit stock code.
• Platform credentials are required. Keep any credentials in .env, never hard-coded.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• Stock-code reuse and exchange prefixes. The six-digit ticker is not a stable permanent identifier: codes can be reused after delisting, and the same number can exist on different exchanges. Use CSMAR’s internal firm identifier and an exchange prefix, not the raw six-digit code, as the join key.
• Share classes split the same firm. A and B (and offshore H) shares of one company trade under different codes, currencies, and investor bases; aggregating them naively double-counts the firm or mixes currencies. Decide your share-class treatment explicitly.
• Module boundaries and frequency mismatches. Holdings and ownership are often semiannual or quarterly while prices are daily; merging across modules requires aligning report dates and disclosure lags. Do not assume a common frequency across modules.
• Accounting-standard and regime breaks. Chinese listed-firm financials span the pre-2007 PRC GAAP regime and the post-2007 IFRS-converged CAS; statement items are not directly comparable across the break. Watch the standard-change date when building long accounting panels.
• Trading halts, limits, and special treatment. Daily price limits, frequent trading suspensions, and ST/*ST special-treatment status produce stale or missing prices and truncated returns; treat suspended days carefully rather than carrying prices forward.
• English/Chinese field labels and code tables. Field names and categorical codes are documented in CSMAR’s manuals (often Chinese-first); misreading a code table silently mislabels a variable. Keep the module codebook for the exact vintage you pulled.

Reference: representative modules

Module	Contents
Trading	Daily/intraday prices, returns, volume, market cap
Financial statements	Balance sheet, income, cash flow for listed firms
Ownership	Top-ten shareholders, ownership structure, controllers
Funds	Mutual-fund holdings and characteristics
Governance	Board, executive, and related-party data

Pull the specific module and fields you need, record the module/version, and keep the codebook; coverage and start dates differ by module.

Citation

Cite the provider and database, e.g.: China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) / GTA Information Technology, accessed YYYY-MM-DD. State the modules and fields used, the firm/share-class universe, and the extraction date so the sample is reproducible.