BEIJING: China will enhance efforts to build a strong and efficient financial industry which will empower the country’s high-quality growth and modernization drive after a tone-setting policy conference stressed the strategic importance of the sector, experts said on Wednesday.
The central financial work conference, which concluded on Tuesday, outlined steps to build up the country’s financial competitiveness, signaled more efforts to optimize financial supervision to prevent and defuse risks, and will boost market confidence, they said, adding that more detail-oriented policy measures and tools can be awaited.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, who is also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered key remarks at the two-day conference, laying out plans for the financial sector for the current and coming periods.
The gathering of top financial policymakers came after China reshaped its financial regulatory architecture earlier this year. The country currently faces growing global geopolitical uncertainties and a tepid economic recovery, which are intertwined with government debt issues and a sluggish property market after three years of the pandemic.
“China must build a strong and efficient enough financial industry to ensure the financial stability and high-quality development of the world’s second-largest economy. That, to some point, will determine the outlook and global competitiveness of the Chinese economy over the next decades,” said Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
He advocated reforms and opening-up in the financial industry and the decisive role of market forces in allocating financial resources, which he said were crucial to boosting the high-quality development of the financial industry in order to fully build a high-quality economy.
Noting that finance is the “lifeblood” of the national economy, the leadership at the meeting said that the financial industry must solve problems including low efficiency, hidden economic and financial risks, and a relatively weak supervisory and governance capacity, to provide high-quality services for economic and social development.
The meeting called for vigorous efforts to create a sound monetary and financial environment, while stepping up quality financial services for major strategies, key areas and weak links. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
