The jaw-dropping fluctuations of the Chinese stock market over the past two decades might have proved too hard for most investors to stomach.

Yet, when the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges observed their 20th anniversary this month, we still find that the fast-growing, and sometimes wild, Chinese stock market has dramatically mirrored China's rise as a global economic power in its own way.

More importantly, it is displaying great potential as a barometer of not only the country's long-term growth story but also the ongoing grand transformation of China's growth pattern.

For most investors who take a bullish view on the Chinese economy, which on average increased by nearly 10 percent a year over the past three decades, the Chinese stock market might have been just too volatile and inefficient for them to make profits on good judgment.

For instance, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index had rocketed from a low of 998.22 in 2005 to an all-time high of 6,124.12 in 2007 before plummeting by more than two thirds the next year.

Such a roller coaster in stock prices has so severely disappointed investors that few of them would like to deem the domestic stock market as a meaningful barometer of the Chinese economy. Comparatively speaking, China has remarkably maintained fast and stable economic growth for more than three decades in face of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and the ongoing global downturn since 2008.

The lack of sound regulation over the Chinese stock market also gave rise to public criticism that it was more of a "casino" than a market aiming to improve the efficiency of capital allocation to fund growth. Nor was the domestic stock market anything close to an important source of income for the people as the Chinese authorities had expected.

However, in spite of all its deficiencies, China's stock market has grown in a span of a mere two decades from scratch into a colossus that boasts more than 2,000 listed companies, some of which are among the world's biggest, about 150 million A-share accounts and a total market value ranking among the global top three.

The expansion of the Chinese stock market in width and depth, though not a steady course in a short-term view, is definitely in line with the rise of China as a global economic power in the long run.

Admittedly, this market remains imperfect in regulation and not efficient and sophisticated enough to underpin China's rise as a global financial powerhouse.

But there are good causes for optimism.

The introduction of a growth enterprise board last year, the launch of stock index futures this year and recently tightened rules against insider trading are all laying a solid foundation for the domestic stock market to play a greater role in serving China's economic growth. And by better defending the interests and rights of individual investors, the market can also develop into a place for Chinese people to share the growth of China Inc.

Besides, given what this market has achieved so far, no one should be too surprised if it is opened to fund-raising by foreign companies or profit-seeking foreign investors in coming years, if not months.