China’s central bank chief makes reform appeal: please free up the yuan
In what may be one of his last major interviews in the job, Zhou Xiaochuan says three liberalisations have been key to the country’s rise on the economic stage
China must press on with a “trinity” of reforms to fully realise an open economy, Zhou Xiaochuan, the country’s central bank chief for the last decade-and-a-half, told influential financial magazine Caijing in what could be one of his last major interviews in the top job.
Zhou, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said China must embrace free trade and investment, let the market decide the yuan’s value, and scrap capital account controls.
He said the three elements were interlinked and could not be separated.
“It’s very clear that they are conditional on each other and none of the three can be spared,” he was quoted as saying in an interview published on Monday night.
At 69, Zhou has designed and promoted a series of economic liberalisations over the last 15 years, including freeing up interest rates at home and earning the yuan a nominal international reserve currency status abroad.