📌 Core Argument China’s securities core counter systems have undergone three generations of evolution: “Decentralized Branch Counters → Grand Centralized Trading Counters → Next-Generation Distributed Xinchuang (Domestic IT Substitution) Core Counters.”
The “Grand Centralized Counter” was the pivotal, bridging generation. It used the Oracle RAC architecture to consolidate client, fund, and holding data from branches nationwide into a central headquarters database, eliminating the业态 (business model) where “clients were locked into a single branch” and laying the foundational infrastructure for over a decade of securities trading. However, its deep reliance on the “IOE” (IBM, Oracle, EMC) architecture foreshadowed the inevitable Xinchuang substitution wave after 2020.
I. The Eve: The Decentralized Branch Counter Era (1990s - 2000)#
1.1 One Branch, One System#
In the early 1990s, securities brokerage operations were independently run at the branch level. Each branch deployed its own counter system, local database (such as Foxbase), and order routing channels. Clients and tellers accessed backend Novell servers via DOS diskless workstations.
Three typical characteristics of this era:
- Data Silos: If a client opened an account at Branch A, they could not trade at Branch B. Client data was死死 (firmly) locked in Branch A’s server room.
- Fragmented Vendor Landscape: Branches selected systems independently, resulting in a highly fragmented market of localized counter systems.
- Rough Management: Risk events such as altering client settlement data, misappropriating client margin funds, and forging client trading instructions occurred frequently, making regulatory oversight extremely difficult.
1.2 Regulatory Push for Centralization#
In December 2003, the CSRC (China Securities Regulatory Commission) issued the Opinions on Strengthening Internal Control Measures for Securities Company Branches, explicitly encouraging securities companies to actively develop centralized trading models to control branch-level risks.
💡 The Historical Turning Point: In 2001, some small and medium-sized securities companies began experimenting with centralized trading. By 2004, China Merchants Securities and others completed the construction of nationwide centralized trading systems—marking the first time in Chinese securities history that “universal buying and selling” (cross-branch trading) was truly realized.
II. The Grand Centralized Counter Era (2004 - 2018): Thirteen Years Dominated by Oracle RAC#
2.1 What is the “Grand Centralized Counter”?#
The core logic of the “Grand Centralized Counter” was crystal clear:
Consolidate all branch client data, fund data, and holding data → into the headquarters' central database.
Branches degraded into mere acceptance and marketing terminals, no longer possessing local servers.
Headquarters connected to nationwide branches via WAN leased lines for unified order routing and unified clearing.Technically, this generation of systems primarily adopted the Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters) architecture—leveraging Oracle’s relational database clustering capabilities to single-handedly shoulder the entire company’s trading load.
2.2 Key Milestones#
| Time | Milestone Event | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Some SME brokerages began experimenting with centralized trading | The beginning of centralization exploration |
| Dec 2003 | CSRC issued branch internal control opinions, encouraging centralized trading | Clear regulatory direction |
| 2004 | China Merchants Securities completed nationwide centralized trading system construction | Year One of the Grand Centralized Counter |
| Aug 2006 | SAC issued Technical Guidelines for Security Management of Centralized Trading | Establishment of technical standards |
| 2008 | The vast majority of securities companies nationwide achieved centralized trading | Centralization became the industry standard |
| 2008-2009 | Introduced weak transaction consistency logic; fully deployed 2nd-gen centralized systems | Maturation of the 2nd-gen Grand Centralized Counter |
2.3 Layered Decoupling: The Technical Architecture#
During the centralized era, trading systems began to feature clear layering, which became the ideological foundation for later distributed architectures:
Channel Layer (APP / PC Trading System / Branch Terminal)
↓
Communication Layer (Various access gateways, message buses)
↓
Application Layer (Trading, clearing, compliance management modules)
↓
Data Layer (Oracle RAC Central Database)The system architecture achieved a certain degree of modular decoupling, laying the groundwork for the next phase of transformation.
2.4 The Formation of a Duopoly#
Kingstar and Hundsun established a duopoly during this phase, capturing a combined market share of over 80%. Representative products of this era:
- Hundsun UF2.0 Series: Centralized trading system
- Kingstar FS1.x / Early FS Series: Centralized trading counter
- Apex A4: Traditional centralized trading counter
2.5 What Did the Grand Centralized Counter Solve?#
Risk Level:
- ✅ Eliminated the space for misappropriating client margin funds (funds were centralized at headquarters).
- ✅ Eradicated forged trading instructions (branches no longer had local databases).
- ✅ Achieved “universal buying and selling” (clients could trade at any branch nationwide or online).
Business Level:
- ✅ Oct 2009: Launch of the ChiNext (Growth Enterprise Market).
- ✅ Mar 2010: Launch of Margin Trading and Securities Lending.
- ✅ Apr 2010: Launch of Stock Index Futures.
- ✅ Jan 2013: Unveiling of the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ).
- ✅ Dec 2017: Pilot of the securities company settlement model for public funds.
For thirteen years, the Grand Centralized Counter stably supported the explosive growth of China’s securities market from a single brokerage business to a full-variety, full-business ecosystem.
2.6 The “Achilles’ Heel” of the Grand Centralized Counter#
However, the Oracle RAC-based Grand Centralized Counter was born with three inherent flaws:
- ⚠️ Performance Shackles: Based on traditional relational databases, trading latency was relatively high, with concurrency limits when trading volumes surged.
- ⚠️ Scalability Shackles: The monolithic architecture made elastic scaling difficult, leaving systems struggling during bull market volume spikes.
- ⚠️ Security Shackles: Deep reliance on the “IOE” architecture (IBM minicomputers + Oracle databases + EMC storage), making core components uncontrollable.
The surge in trading volume during the 2015 bull market completely exposed the high latency and concurrency limitations of the second-generation centralized system—serving as the direct catalyst for the demise of the Grand Centralized Counter.
III. The Transition Period: The “Patching” Phase of the 2nd-Gen System (2008 - 2018)#
3.1 Introduction of Weak Transaction Consistency#
Following the 2008 bull market, brokerages began introducing weak transaction consistency logic to handle trading, aiming to alleviate system capacity and performance bottlenecks. The second-generation centralized trading system was fully deployed starting in 2009.
3.2 Externalization and Decoupling of Business Modules#
As brokerages launched new businesses, certain original functions were forced into independent systems:
- Margin Trading Systems: Spun off from the centralized system.
- Options Trading Systems: Built separately.
- Various Fast Trading / PB (Prime Brokerage) Systems: Serving institutional and quantitative clients.
- OTC Systems: Independent handling of over-the-counter business.
The centralized trading system gradually became “bloated,” focusing primarily on supporting the core functions of exchange-traded business: trading, clearing, and compliance management.
3.3 The Core Contradiction of This Phase#
The monolithic centralized trading system could no longer meet the demands of brokerage businesses, but distributed technologies were not yet fully mature. The entire industry was in an awkward transition period from the second-generation centralized system to the third-generation distributed system.
IV. Three Generations of Replacement: The Distributed Xinchuang Core Counter Era (2018 - Present)#
4.1 The Triple Drivers of Transformation#
| Driver Dimension | Specific Manifestation |
|---|---|
| Business Driver | Continuous growth in trading volume; transformation of brokerage business towards comprehensive wealth management and institutional services. |
| Technology Driver | Maturation of distributed, in-memory, and low-latency architectures, making multi-node parallel processing possible. |
| Localization Driver | Comprehensive promotion of financial Xinchuang starting in 2020; reliance on foreign products for core components became unacceptable. |
4.2 The Technological Leap of Three Generations#
Gen 1: Decentralized Branch Counter (1990s-2000)
↓ [Oracle RAC + Headquarters Centralization]
Gen 2: Grand Centralized Trading Counter (2004-2018)
↓ [Distributed + In-Memory + Low-Latency + Full-Stack Xinchuang]
Gen 3: Distributed Xinchuang Core Counter (2018-Present)Starting in 2018, centralized trading systems gradually transformed into systems featuring distributed, in-memory, and low-latency architectural characteristics. The technical architecture was further decoupled, splitting the trading system into multiple modules: trading, settlement, funds, accounts, operations, bus, and O&M.
4.3 The Formation of the Four-Titan Landscape#
The third-generation core counter market has formed a four-way split:
| Vendor / Product | Technical Route |
|---|---|
| Hundsun UF3.0 | Bimodal IT architecture, Oracle compatibility, smooth migration for existing clients |
| Kingstar FS2.5 | Native Xinchuang, KOCA Cloud-Native + K-LDP low-latency platform |
| Apex A5 / A5 Max | Compute-storage separation + proprietary HyperDB in-memory database, thorough De-Oracle |
| HuaRui ATP T7 | Message-driven + AMI bus, specialization in ultra-fast trading |
4.4 Milestone Progress in Xinchuang Implementation#
- June 2023: The Securities Association of China issued the Three-Year Improvement Plan for Securities Companies’ Network and Information Security (2023-2025), explicitly stating: “Encourage qualified securities companies to actively promote the construction of next-generation core systems, actively transitioning from centralized proprietary technical architectures to distributed, low-latency, open technical architectures.”
- Since 2024: Industry Xinchuang has shifted from “pilot exploration” to “mandatory implementation.”
- Guotai Junan: Successfully completed the full switchover of 19 million clients in 2024, achieving full-link, full-stack Xinchuang.
- China Merchants Securities: Full switchover of millions of clients using UF3.0.
- CITIC Securities: Migration of hundreds of millions of clients using A5 Max.
- Soochow Securities: Full launch of the A5 Xinchuang edition, reducing trading latency from 10ms to <1ms.
V. The “Legacy” of the Grand Centralized Counter: What We Should Remember#
5.1 It is the Infrastructure Cornerstone of China’s Securities Industry#
Without the Grand Centralized Counter, there would be no modernization of China’s capital markets. It stably supported all business innovations in the securities market for fourteen years (2004-2018) using the Oracle RAC architecture—from ChiNext to stock index futures, from margin trading to the New Third Board, and from public fund brokerage settlement to options trading.
5.2 Its Architectural Ideas Endure Today#
The four-layer architecture established in the centralized era (“Channel Layer → Communication Layer → Application Layer → Data Layer”), and its later evolution into the seven-module decoupling (“trading, settlement, funds, accounts, operations, bus, O&M”), is the direct ideological source of today’s distributed core counter architecture.
5.3 Its Exit is an Inevitability of Technological Evolution#
The decline of the Grand Centralized Counter is not because it was “bad,” but because:
- The 2015 bull market exposed the performance ceiling of Oracle RAC.
- The 2020 Xinchuang strategy demanded autonomous controllability of core components.
- The wealth management transformation required systems to have elastic scaling capabilities.
- Institutional and quantitative trading demanded microsecond-level latency.
These four challenges are fundamental problems that the Oracle RAC monolithic architecture could never solve, no matter how much it was optimized. Distributed, in-memory, low-latency, and full-stack Xinchuang—these four technical routes constitute the irreversible trend of the third-generation core counter replacing the Grand Centralized Counter.
VI. Conclusion: Viewing the Future Through History#
Looking back at the history of the Grand Centralized Counter, we can draw three key insights:
💡 Insight 1: Every generational leap in core counter architecture is not a smooth evolution, but driven by crises or bottlenecks. The 2004 centralization was driven by operational risks like “misappropriation of client margin funds”; the 2018 distributed transformation was driven by the dual forces of the “2015 bull market performance bottleneck + the 2020 Xinchuang strategy.”
💡 Insight 2: The Hundsun-Kingstar duopoly formed during the Grand Centralized Counter era is being reshaped in the third-generation core counter era. Apex has built a differentiated barrier of autonomous controllability with its proprietary in-memory database, winning multiple benchmark orders; Kingstar has achieved scaled replication in head institutions with its native Xinchuang architecture; HuaRui focuses on the ultra-fast, low-latency niche track. Traditional giants and specialized Xinchuang tech providers are forming a stratified, differentiated competitive landscape.
💡 Insight 3: Since 2024, securities industry Xinchuang has shifted from “pilot exploration” to “mandatory implementation.” Replacing traditional centralized trading systems with next-generation fully Xinchuang distributed counters has become the mainstream transformation solution, with head brokerages showing particularly strong willingness to upgrade. Before the 2027 Xinchuang deadline, the Grand Centralized Counter will basically exit the historical stage of China’s securities market—but its technical ideas, business accumulation, and engineering experience will continue to guard the Chinese capital market in a new form: distributed, in-memory, and low-latency.
📌 Author’s Note: The Grand Centralized Counter was not “overthrown”; it was “transcended.” It used the Oracle RAC architecture to answer the core proposition of the 2004 era: “How to make trading risks controllable across nationwide branches.” Today’s distributed Xinchuang core counter must answer the core proposition of the 2024 era: “How to achieve full-stack autonomous controllability under microsecond-level latency.” The two generations of systems engage in a dialogue across time, jointly writing the history of generational leaps in China’s securities IT. When we talk about the four-titan battle of UF3.0, FS2.5, A5, and ATP T7 today, we must not forget—their technical bloodlines can all be traced back to the era when the Grand Centralized Counter propped up the entire industry’s trading with Oracle RAC.