China wants to open financial sector wider but it’s a ‘negotiation game’ in trade war, Zhou Xiaochuan says
- Beijing has determination for ‘much braver financial liberalisation and opening-up policies’, former central bank governor says at event in London
- He also rejects calls from within China for greater protectionism
Beijing’s financial decision makers are determined to open the sector wider, but the process of doing so has been partly affected by the trade war with the United States, according to the former chief of China’s central bank.
Zhou Xiaochuan, who was governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) from 2002 to 2018, told a gathering hosted by Enodo Economics in London on Thursday that the issue of access to China’s financial sector had been used as a bargaining chip in the trade talks.
“Since China-US negotiation is still going on, sometimes they play this card in the pocket as a negotiation game to see what the counterpart is doing,” Zhou said in English at the closed-door event, according to a recording of his speech obtained by the South China Morning Post.
He made the comments amid growing complaints about market access and operating difficulties faced by foreign companies, especially in financial services, in China, and as Washington continues to apply pressure on Beijing to reform the sector – something it has long promised to do.
China’s central bank announced a series of measures to open the financial sector in April last year, three months before a tariff war broke out between the world’s two largest economies in July. Those measures included relaxing foreign ownership rules for securities ventures and insurers, and Beijing has said that within three years it will scrap the restrictions entirely.