BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of thousands of Chinese have plunged gleefully into the bullish stock markets with an average of 115,000 new A-share accounts opened each day in the first four trading days of the lunar New Year.

    A total of 110,000 new individual trading accounts were opened on China's two Renminbi stock exchanges on Monday, the first trading day of the lunar New year, when the Shanghai Composite Index closed at a record 3,040.60 points, according to latest statistics from the China Securities Depository and Clearing Corp. Ltd.

    Tuesday's stock market slump, which saw shares drop by 8.84 percent, the biggest daily drop in 10 years, did nothing to buck the trend with a record 130,000 new accounts opened.

    A further 220,000 new accounts were opened in the next two days, bringing the total number of personal accounts on the two bourses to 82.99 million.

    Analysts estimate that around 520,000 new accounts will be opened this week, as much as for the whole month of May 2006.

    A stock trader is only allowed to open one personal account on each of the two bourses.

    After a four-year recession, China's mainland stock markets began to rebound at the beginning of 2006, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, which covers A- and B- shares, continuously hitting new highs.

    In January 2006, a daily average of 2,708 new A-share accounts were opened.