Chinese stocks closed lower Wednesday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index down 0.46 percent, at 3,140.53 points.
The smaller Shenzhen index closed 0.96 percent lower at 10,232.82 points.
The ChiNext Index, which tracks China's NASDAQ-style enterprises, lost 1.11 percent to close at 1,963.08 points.
Turnover on the two exchanges rose to 468.9 billion yuan (about 67.96 billion U.S. dollars) from 457.98 billion yuan the previous trading day.
The head of China's insurance regulator has said that insurers should not act as securities speculators amid market concerns driven by large stake acquisitions using borrowed money.
The remarks came as a hard-line response to recent "barbaric" behavior of some insurers using leveraged money to buy shares of listed companies.
Triggering sharp volatility in the market, the moves annoyed corporate executives and caused individual investors to suffer.
Concerns over the imminent Fed interest rate hike also fuelled waves of risk aversion across markets.
The airplane manufacturing sector led the gains with a 2.05 percent increase while the environmental protection industry suffered the greatest loss of 1.5 percent.
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