Financial areas to open up with high standards
Banking, insurance, securities among sectors to see more global participants
Senior officials pledged on Wednesday to introduce more foreign participation in the nation’s financial sector and keep the macroeconomic policy stable, contributing more to global economic and financial stability.
China will forge ahead with allaround opening- up in the financial industry and create a fair environment for competition, ushering more global participants into banking, insurance, securities, asset management and other sectors, Vice- Premier Liu He said on Wednesday.
“A new round of development and reform and opening- up with higher standards” will start in the financial system in the 14 th FiveYear Plan ( 2021- 25) period, Liu said at the opening of the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2020 in Beijing.
Liu underscored the importance of strengthening international cooperation, improving global economic governance and promoting financial deepening amid the COVID- 19 pandemic.
Top financial regulators at the conference said foreign competitors would help improve the country’s financial resources and the country will further align domestic rules more closely with international practices.
China has rolled out dozens of measures to open up the sector in recent years, substantially raising foreign ownership caps and expanding the business scope of foreign institutions, said Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the top banking and insurance regulator.
The result has been the establishment of China’s first wholly foreign- invested insurance holding company and life insurer, as well as the first foreign- controlled wealth management company, Guo said at the conference.
Sixty percent of public buses in the country are electric, compared with only 20 percent in 2015, he added.
Great achievements have also been recorded in water pollution control with the reduction of pollutant discharges, according to the ministry.
By the end of 2019, the country had brought 74.9 percent of its surface water to a quality level at or above Grade III, the third- highest level in the country’s five- tier water quality system, up by 8.9 percentage points from 2015. The proportion of water with quality below Grade V, the poorest quality level, decreased by 6.3 percentage points to 3.4 percent, the ministry said.
It also said that by the end of September, 81.2 percent of the country’s surface water was at Grade III or above, and the proportion of water below Grade V has declined to only 0.8 percent.
Despite the achievement, Zhao said “the grim situation of pollution control and environmental protection in the country has yet to be changed fundamentally”.
The most outstanding problem is that no fundamental changes have occurred in the dominance of the heavy chemical sector in the industrial structure, the reliance on coal for energy consumption and the dependence on roads in transportation, he noted.