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Frank Chen

Sylvia Ma

Top Chinese financial regulators have vowed to accelerate Shanghai’s transformation into a full-fledged global financial hub and encourage the yuan’s overseas adoption, as Beijing seeks to tout China’s stability amid volatility in the global market.
Speaking in Shanghai on Wednesday at an annual financial gathering known as the Lujiazui Forum, policymakers such as People’s Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng also said that the city would continue to serve as a vital conduit for offshore finance and foreign participation in domestic markets.
As the two-day forum kicked off, the head of the central bank used his keynote speech to outline an updated action plan for Shanghai’s offshore finance and the yuan business.
“We will conduct a pilot programme for offshore-yuan foreign-exchange trading in Shanghai to promote a two-way opening of the market and help Shanghai become a global yuan-asset-allocation and risk-management centre,” Pan said.
He added that the PBOC would establish repurchase facilities for overseas central banks and monetary authorities to use high-grade assets, such as Chinese government bonds, for repurchase agreements. The move is meant to facilitate yuan-liquidity management and asset allocation.
Six lenders – Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; Agricultural Bank of China; Bank of China; China Construction Bank; Bank of Communications; and Citic Bank – will be authorised to conduct offshore-yuan foreign-exchange trading in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone using the China Foreign Exchange Trade System, he said.
The central bank will also launch the Interbank Market Data Repository, while a digital yuan “international operations centre”, announced at last year’s forum, is now operational.
At the event, the PBOC and the Shanghai municipal government pledged to unify efforts to internationalise the city’s financial sector, a key pillar of the Communist Party’s “financial superpower” ambitions.


The push comes as foreign central banks, especially those in the Global South, have increased holdings of Chinese treasury bonds in recent years, while reserve holdings of yuan assets have also risen, according to data from the International Monetary Fund.
Overseas institutions, including central banks, had 3.12 trillion yuan (US$462 billion) in China’s interbank bond market by the end of April, accounting for 1.8 per cent of the total. Their A-share holdings totalled 4 trillion yuan, or about 3 per cent of the total.
Meanwhile, Zhu Hexin, head of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, also revealed in his address at the forum that a fresh batch of Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) quotas would be issued this fall, without giving specific details. Introduced in 2006, the QDII scheme allows domestic institutions to invest in overseas capital markets, via foreign-exchange quotas approved by regulators.
Total QDII fund assets reached 833.7 billion yuan at the end of 2025, up 57 per cent from a year earlier, though quota constraints have periodically forced popular funds to suspend subscriptions.
This year’s forum takes place as the Chinese economy grapples with pronounced imbalances and even strains in some sectors, with the latest official data pointing to persistently sluggish consumption and weak investment.
New bank loans totalled 520 billion yuan in May, trailing the 620 billion yuan recorded during the same period last year, underscoring a marked underperformance across both corporate and household lending.
Noting that the economy was undergoing a profound transformation of old and new drivers of growth, Pan said the financial system should adapt to and serve this upgrading.
“China’s economy has shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development,” Pan said. “Correspondingly, financial services for the economy should optimise the structure.”
He said the PBOC would optimise the short-term interest rate operational framework towards a price-based monetary policy framework. The new interest rate corridor would be centred on the seven-day reverse repo rate plus or minus 25 basis points, with overnight tools added to better manage liquidity. The central bank is also exploring a liquidity backstop for non-bank financial institutions as a macroprudential tool under stressed market conditions.
Pan emphasised that while scale matters for a country’s financial competitiveness, the richness of services and products is even more crucial. He also noted that funding had shifted dramatically, with real estate and infrastructure loans falling sharply while financing for tech, green energy and the digital economy dominates new loans.


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China’s central bank governor speaks at annual financial forum about further opening repurchase facilities and offshore trading to foreign central banks


China’s central bank governor speaks at annual financial forum about further opening repurchase facilities and offshore trading to foreign central banks.


Shanghai to lead ‘financial superpower’ push as China unveils plan to boost yuan use

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}China’s central bank governor speaks at annual financial forum about further opening repurchase facilities and offshore trading to foreign central banks

China’s central bank governor speaks at annual financial forum about further opening repurchase facilities and offshore trading to foreign central banks