Strengthen the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of small and medium investors, and emphasize the "focus on cracking down on large and malicious" in the classification evaluation of securities firms.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has officially implemented the revised "Regulations on the Classification Evaluation of Securities Companies", focusing on "cracking down on big and bad" and strengthening the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of small and medium-sized investors. It was noted that Article 18 of the current "Regulations" lists the applicable situations for lowering the company's evaluation results, including major risk events or serious failures in corporate governance and internal controls. This revision further expands the scope of downgrading ratings to include "significant illegal and irregular behaviors", providing space for downgrading company evaluation results in major malicious cases in practice, and further improving the availability of relevant measures. In accordance with the principle of "appropriate penalties", the point deduction for "qualifications penalties" disciplinary measures has been appropriately increased, further strengthening the institutional deterrence of "qualifications penalties" self-discipline management measures. At the same time, the point deduction for administrative penalties has been appropriately optimized to maintain overall balance with other point deduction and addition items.