SHENZHEN -- A new stock trading system was put to use at China's Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Monday, paving the way for a stock connect program between the Shenzhen and Hong Kong bourses.

The new system supports cross-market trading and is now ready for the launch of new businesses including the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect and stock options trading, said Zou Sheng, executive vice president of the exchange.

With completely independent intellectual property rights, the system is an improvement on a previous version, Zou said.

It can accommodate over 300 million investor accounts and 50,000 stocks, compared with 5,000 stocks for the old system. As many as 300,000 transactions can be handled per second, triple the amount previously.

The new system is also cheaper, costing 40 percent as much as the old one, according to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Research and development work on the system began in 2011 and concluded in 2015, with a test run started in May 2016.

Economists expect China to launch the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect this year to expand overseas investor's exposure to the country's onshore stock market.

A similar connect program between the Shanghai and Hong Kong bourses was launched in 2014. It lets investors on the mainland and those based in Hong Kong to trade selected stocks on each other's exchanges.