China’s anaemic corporate bond market is set to expand exponentially after the government loosened its grip on the sector on Wednesday by introducing a new regulatory regime.

Corporate bonds are virtually non-existent in China, mostly because they are regulated by the state’s conservative and anachronistic central planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission. The commission only allows a handful of giant state-owned enterprises to issue bonds through a limited and extremely opaque quota system. It sets the price and issue date for the bonds and requires them to be underwritten by the state’s commercial banks.