Shanghai booster Fang Xinghai lands Beijing financial advisory role
Fang Xinghai, who once put down Hong Kong's importance as a finance hub, named a senior financial advisory official in Beijing
The key man behind Shanghai's ambitious plan to develop the city into the world's leading financial centre by 2020 has been promoted to an elite economic team that may help the city speed up its market reforms as it prepares to take on Hong Kong.
The team worked for the central committee of the Communist Party and was in charge of all vital financial and macroeconomic matters, the sources said.
Premier Li Keqiang directly oversees this low-profile, Beijing-based group, whose main responsibilities include making and advising on key economic decisions and drafting the working agenda of the Central Economic Work Conference, the most important annual economic policy meeting in the country. While Fang's elevation signals the leadership's eagerness to draw younger local officials to Beijing's top policymaking circles, it may also make officials in Hong Kong uneasy.
At the 2011 Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, Fang said the speed with which Hong Kong became a successful offshore yuan centre would depend on how soon Shanghai could turn itself into an onshore yuan trading centre. The statement, signalling a subordinate role for Hong Kong in the future, triggered concerns among Hong Kong officials and bankers.
One of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Fang wrote a letter to President Xi Jinping during the National People's Congress meeting this year to express his interest to "serve the country's financial industry development better at the national level", and Xi quickly forwarded it to the central group in charge of financial and economic affairs.
Fang and Xi briefly worked together in Shanghai when Xi was appointed the city's party chief in 2007.