BEIJING, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Nasdaq Stock Market opened a representative office in Beijing Monday in a fresh move to tap the bourse's fastest growing market outside the United States.

    The office will serve the growing number of Chinese firms listed or seeking to list on Nasdaq and deepen its dialogue with China's bourses and regulatory bodies, Nasdaq said in a statement.

    Xu Guangxun, Nasdaq's chief representative in China, told a press conference in Beijing that Nasdaq had plans to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, China's biggest bourse.

    Xu's remark came two days after China's top securities official Shang Fulin said China would lure overseas firms and Hong Kong-listed domestic firms into the mainland stock market.

    The statement said so far this year 19 mainland firms had chosen to list on Nasdaq and that a total of 52 mainland listings had a combined global market capitalization of 57 billion U.S. dollars.

    "There is no doubt that more than 20 mainland firms will list on Nasdaq this year." said Xu. "It won't take long for the Chinese mainland firms to overtake Israeli ones as the biggest non-U.S. group on Nasdaq."

    Also on Monday, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) said it would officially inaugurate its Beijing office next week which would also help the bourse to woo more initial public offerings in the fast-growing Chinese economy.

    The NYSE currently lists 38 firms from the Chinese mainland, among which 14 launched their initial public offerings this year.

    Both Nasdaq and the NYSE got the approval from China's securities regulators in September this year to open their offices in Beijing.

    As Chinese firms have become a new power in the global capital market, stock exchanges from Britain, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and other countries have also stepped up efforts to hunt for them.

    Eighty-one Chinese firms raised 20.5 billion U.S. dollars from overseas initial public offerings in 2005. And in 2006, 86 Chinese firms raised 44 billion U.S. dollars this way, accounting for 19 percent of the 2006 world total.