(Corrects pronoun for Wang to 'she', not 'he', in third-last paragraph)
HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - China stepped up attempts to calm frayed investor nerves after a wild markets rout this week by telling foreign brokerages not to "overinterpret" its latest regulatory actions, setting the stage for a rebound in beaten-down stocks on Thursday.
Chinese state media also joined in to say yuan-denominated assets in China remained attractive and that short-term market panic did not represent long-term value.
China stocks had their best day in two months on Thursday. The blue-chip CSI300 Index jumped 1.9% and the Shanghai Composite Index gained 1.5%, but for the week, the gauges are still down 4.7% and 3.9%, respectively.
Shenzhen's start-up board ChiNext jumped 5.3%, recouping nearly all of this week's savage losses.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index ended Thursday up 3.3%, shrinking this week's loss to 3.7%. The Hang Seng Tech Index, the target of a heavy sell-off earlier this week, surged 8%, but is still down 4.3% for the week.
The gains came after the securities regulator on Wednesday night held a meeting with executives of top global investment banks with an aim to calm financial markets nerves, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The meeting added to official efforts to shore up investor confidence, which has been dented by Beijing's sweeping regulatory actions that hit firms in the $120 billion private tutoring sector and technology behemoths.
"This is more to calm the market to isolate the education industry and not to overinterpret it," said one of the people, who has knowledge of the meeting held by China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) vice chairman Fang Xinghai.
At the meeting, Fang told the bankers that official policies would be rolled out more steadily to avoid sharp volatility in the markets, said another person, adding Fang also indicated the crackdown was not aimed at decoupling Sino-U.S. financial markets.
Executives from investment banks Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and UBS, among others, attended the meeting, said the people, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
The regulator only invited those foreign brokerages with existing licenses to operate in the country, said a separate person with knowledge of the meeting.
CSRC did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Representatives at Credit Suisse, Goldman, JPMorgan, and UBS declined to comment. Bloomberg first reported the regulatory meeting on Wednesday.