China will open financial sector wider amid ‘quite limited’ impact of trade war, regulator says
- Head of banking and insurance regulator Guo Shuqing also tells state TV Beijing has no plans to engineer depreciation of yuan to boost exports
- He says foreign investors in the sectors may be able to take higher stakes in the future that ‘could even reach 61, 71, 81 per cent or even 100 per cent’
China will further open its financial sector despite its trade war with the US, and it has no plans to engineer a currency depreciation to support its exports, its chief financial regulator said.
In an interview with state broadcaster CCTV aired on Monday evening, Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said Beijing would open its doors wider to foreign financial institutions and it was confident it could control any potential fallout from the trade war.
According to Guo, China is focusing on boosting fundraising by its capital markets to support economic growth.
“One of our key [reforms] this year is to accelerate the development of the direct fundraising ability of our capital markets in order to support our economic development,” said Guo, who is also the Communist Party official overseeing the People’s Bank of China.
To facilitate that, Guo said China would widen access for foreign financial institutions.