(Yicai) June 19 -- The most senior officials from China’s financial regulatory agencies delivered keynote speeches at this year's Lujiazui Forum yesterday, conveying significant policy signals and demonstrating a firm commitment to reform, opening-up, and serving the real economy.

The two-day forum kicked off in Shanghai's Pudong New Area yesterday. Themed 'Financial Opening-up, Cooperation for High-Quality Development in a Changing Global Economy,' this year's edition is hosting more than 70 Chinese and foreign experts, international organizations, financial institutions, and government departments.

PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng: Promoting Int’l Monetary System Reform

Global financial governance was the key focus of Pan Gongsheng's speech, as the governor of the People's Bank of China signaled the active promotion of reforms to the global monetary and payment systems.

The Chinese yuan has become the world's second-largest trade financing currency and the third-biggest global payment currency on a full‑scope basis, with its ranking in the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights rising to third place, Pan said.

Pan predicted that the international monetary system will evolve toward a framework in which a handful of sovereign currencies coexist, compete, and check one another, adding that internationally dominant currencies have the attributes of global public goods.

Having a single currency bear this status creates inherent instability, including the contradiction between the issuer country's own interests and its global public goods attributes, the spillover of its fiscal and financial problems to the world, and the risk of the currency being instrumentalized and weaponized during geopolitical conflicts, he noted.

On the topic of reform of cross-border payment system, Pan advocated the need to diversify to reduce the reliance on any single infrastructure.

NFRA Director Li Yunze: Opening-Up and Cooperation Are Key Themes of Our Times

Opening-up and cooperation are the main themes of financial development at the present time, Li Yunze, director of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, said during his keynote speech.

Foreign banks and insurers have assets of over CNY7 trillion (USD973.6 billion) in China, and their businesses continue to expand, he noted. The share of the Chinese market occupied by overseas insurers has more than doubled to 9 percent from 4 percent in 2013, while foreign banks account for nearly 20 percent of the country’s derivatives market.

Meanwhile, Chinese financial institutions have established an extensive presence across more than 70 countries and regions globally, Li added.

He pointed out that China's consumption is upgrading and expanding, presenting huge opportunities for financial services. China leads the world for sales of autos, mobile phones, and home appliances, while service consumption is in a rapid growth phase, with total consumption lagging that of developed markets by about 10 percentage points, he said.

With regard to technological innovation, China has achieved continuous breakthroughs in the aerospace, quantum technology, artificial intelligence, and other fields, becoming one of the world's most active innovation hubs, Li pointed out.

The NFRA is vigorously promoting pilot programs such as equity investment by financial asset management companies and merger and acquisition loans for technology enterprises, he added.

SAFE Head Zhu Hexin: New QDII Investment Quotas

Zhu Hexin, deputy governor of the PBOC and head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, announced a series of new two-way opening-up measures, including promoting the policy of integrated Chinese yuan and foreign currency funds pools for multinational companies nationwide, carrying out pilot projects for green foreign debt policies, and improving the management of funds for Chinese businesses listed overseas.

China will soon issue a new batch of qualified domestic institutional investor investment quotas to meet reasonable outbound investment needs, Zhu said.

The QDII quotas stood at USD167.8 billion across 189 licensed institutions as of May 31. In May last year, the SAFE allocated USD2.3 billion of new quotas to 53 institutions, marking the first increase in a year.

CSRC Chairman Wu Qing: Deepening Start Market's '1+6' Reform

The China Securities Regulatory Commission will continue to fully leverage the example set by the Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Star Market by launching '1+6' policy measures, Chairman Wu Qing said.

The measures include the launch of a new "growth tier" for unprofitable tech startups that have made major breakthroughs, have solid business prospects, and make sustained investments in research and development.

This new tier represents an opportunity to revive the Star Market's five-track listing system, which allows unprofitable companies to go public, Wu noted.

The five-track listing system is a special pathway that imposes no requirements on an applicant's profits or revenue. However, it does require that a company's core business or products have been approved by central government authorities and demonstrate significant market potential and milestone progress.

Other reforms will include expanding the eligible sectors under the five-track system beyond biomedicine to fields such as AI, commercial aerospace, and the low-altitude economy, introducing a professional institutional investor system, and piloting a pre‑ initial public offering review process.

Editor: Futura Costaglione