China's largest re-insurer, China Re, has received a capital injection of US$4 billion, heading for a listing this year, said the country's insurance watchdog yesterday.

The infusion came from the Central Huijin Investment Co., an investment company owned by the People's Bank of China as shareholder for the "big four" state-owned banks, said Wu Dingfu, president of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), at a national work conference here Sunday.

The money will replenish the reinsurer's capital strength to meet a huge domestic insurance demand and power an expected listing in the stock market, Xinhua learnt from the CIRC.

With a registered capital of 3.9 billion yuan before the injection, the utmost value of insurance that China Re could provide was 16 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, China is to see a reinsurance market of about 100 billion yuan (12.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2010, according to theCIRC.

China Re is the country's only solely state-owned reinsurance company and takes an 80 percent share of domestic reinsurance market.

Before choosing a suitable time for listing, the company will standardize its corporate governance, transform into a shareholding company and introduce strategic investors from home and abroad while maintaining the absolute shareholding by the state.

China Re is the country's first insurance company that got capital injection from Huijin, which has invested a total of 60 billion U.S. dollars in the Bank of China, China Construction Bankand Industrial and Commercial Bank before they went public.

Once listed, China Re will be the first state-owned insurer to become a shareholding company.

The CIRC encourages high-grade capital, especially large state-owned enterprises with good credit and performance, to invest in the insurance sector and will explore investment and acquisition by banks, said Wu.

He said the CIRC will support qualified insurers to develop into shareholding group companies with international competitiveness through restructuring and acquisition.