A flood of buy orders in the late afternoon narrowed losses at the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Tuesday to 0.19 percent at the close from its nadir of 5.7 percent earlier in the day.

Turnover increased 13.6 percent to over 100 billion yuan ($16.26 billion) from the 88 billion yuan registered on the previous trading day. The increase was largely attributed to the flurry of late orders.

It's not clear where the buying was coming from, but stockbrokers and analysts said that major investors are obviously trying to stabilize the market, which has fallen 14.83 percent since the beginning of the month.