Professor On Kit Tam, Professor Gill Palmer, Dr Geoff Raby, Madam Wu Xiaoling and Professor Wang Guangqian at the opening of the forum.

Faculty hosts high level forum on China's banking reform in Beijing

A high-level forum between China’s leading financial institutions and the faculty was held in Beijing to discuss China’s banking sector’s need to reform and perform.

With the world’s largest bank in capitalisation, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Chinese banking sector needs to perform efficiently to ensure its commercial and macroeconomic functions are fulfilled to sustain the country’s phenomenal growth.

Madam Wu Xiaoling, Deputy Governor of China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, called for Chinese commercial banks to take note of the central bank’s moral attempt to restrain excessive lending.  She stressed the importance of effective corporate governance and the bank’s social responsibility to ensure long term shareholders interest.

Madam Wu Xiaoling was one of the keynote speakers at the forum jointly organised by the faculty and the prestigious Central University of Finance and Economics of China (CUFE).

The Australian Ambassador to China, Dr Geoff Raby, made mention of the Australian banking reform experience to demonstrate the benefits of having the right regulations and foreign competition for the banking industry.

CUFE President Professor Wang Guangqian and Professor Gill Palmer opened the forum in the Main Academic Hall of CUFE.

A total of twenty international experts and senior executives of financial institutions and more than 700 academic staff and students participated in the event.

Professor On Kit Tam, co-organiser of the forum, said Madam Wu’s analysis of China’s monetary management and banking reform issues was convincing and frank and generated much interest and debate from the audience. Her remarks on the lending behaviour of Chinese banks immediately became front page news in the London Financial Times.

The roundtable discussion involved prominent people from major financial institutions  - Chairman of the Bank of Beijing; Deputy Director, Research Division of the China Banking Regulatory Commission; Managing Director, BNP Paribus Peregrine Asia; Managing Director, Asia Pacific Economic Analysis, Citigroup Global Markets Asia; Director of The Brookings-Tsinghua Center; Executive Director of Steer and Cohen Asia; Deputy Director of the Institute of Finance, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The panel discussion highlighted the contribution of the opening up of the market to the country’s reform success. There was rigorous debate on the entry mode and the role of strategic foreign investors in China’s banking sector. The relationship between the banks’ ownership mix, corporate governance and the banks’ performance was seen as critical to the development of a modern, competitive banking industry.