The nation's first private securities fund index has been launched in Beijing on Wednesday, as an attempt to better reflect the private fund sector.

Peng Cong, founder of China's finance analysis company ZeeDao Research Institute behind the index, said the index covered a range of topics, including equity strategies, managed futures, fixed incomes, relative values and compound strategies.

"We expect to give an objective reflection of the domestic private securities fund market, which will help to evaluate the return of investment and lay the foundation of other related researches," he said.

The total paid-in assets under management (AUM) of private funds reached 8.55 trillion yuan ($1.24 trillion) in February, 2017. The figure was up 8.4 percent, from 7.89 trillion yuan in December, 2016, according to the report by ZeeDao.

The paid-in AUM of private securities funds also rose by 1.28 percent, moving from 2.76 trillion yuan to 2.80 trillion yuan.

The report also stated small-sized private funds have dominated China's private fund industry, with 95 percent of managers' AUM below 1 billion yuan.

Funds with offices in Shanghai occupy the largest proportions, in terms of number of managers and funds, which was followed by Shenzhen, in South China's Guangdong province, and then Beijing.

The private securities fund index of East China's Zhejiang province, however, ranked first.

Xu Shizhen, director of ZeeDao Research Institute, said Zhejiang had many financial talents, and was a place with a fund which surpassed 350 billion yuan. The influence was enlarged due to the geological location of Zhejiang, located near Shanghai.

Overall, as stated in the report, private security funds have performed well in the first quarter of 2017, with 65 percent of those funds achieving a positive return.