China to open new centre to boost yuan's global reach

RTHK：Video News

China's central bank governor on Wednesday said the country will set up an "international operations centre" for the digital yuan as part of efforts to boost the yuan's global influence. Speaking at the opening of the annual Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai, Pan Gongsheng also vowed that policymakers will push forward the yuan's foreign exchange futures trading in the mainland finance hub to provide a new-risk hedging tool for investors, after the country built a multi-channel, wide coverage cross-border yuan clearing network over the past decade. Pan, the chief of the People's Bank of China, said a more competitive global monetary system will take root in the years to come, with less reliance on a single dominant currency. "In recent years, the problems faced by the traditional cross-border payment system have gradually emerged, as traditional cross-border payment infrastructures can be easily politicised and weaponised and used as a tool for unilateral sanctions, damaging global economic and financial order," he told forum participants. "Developing a multi-polar international monetary system will help strengthen policy constraints on sovereign currency countries, enhance the resilience of the system and better safeguard global financial stability." The central bank chief also said the global status of the yuan has risen in recent years and it has become the world's second largest trade finance currency, as well as the third largest payment currency in the world. Pan said authorities will launch trials of a range of structural monetary policy tools in Shanghai, as part of eight new financial policies to accelerate the rise of the city as a global finance hub. "We will support Shanghai in pioneering innovative structural monetary policy tools, including launching the pilot projects here such as the blockchain-based credit refinancing in the aviation and shipping sectors, cross-border trade refinancing mechanisms, expansion of tools for carbon emission reduction," he said. "And we'll actively encourage Shanghai to use the risk-sharing mechanisms in tech innovation bonds to support private equity institutions to issue tech innovation bonds." Other measures include plans to establish a trade reporting repository for the interbank market to analyse high-frequency transaction data across the financial markets. Echoing Pan, Wu Qing, chairman of China's Securities Regulatory Commission, told the forum that China will advance the development of science and technology bonds to support innovation. He said the country will introduce more science and technology indexes and mutual fund products related to such themes to attract more mid- to long-term investment capital in the sector. Also speaking at the event was Li Yunze, director of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, who noted that the country's financial opening up as well as rapidly growing consumer market provide better asset allocation opportunities for global capital. He said total assets under foreign banks and insurance institutions in China have exceeded 7 trillion yuan, adding that the nation's "silver economy" is expected to reach 30 trillion yuan by 2035 when more than 400 million people in the country will be aged 60 and above.