The China Securities and Regulatory Commission (CSRC) met with executives at top international banks and asset managers to reassure them about the country’s economic prospects after regulatory crackdowns, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Fang Xinghai, CSRC vice-chairman, hosted the virtual meeting with more than a dozen foreign financial institutions on Tuesday, the sources said.
Senior executives from firms including BlackRock, Credit Suisse, Fidelity International, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS attended the meeting, the sources said.
Fang reassured the meeting participants that China will achieve “respectable growth” in 2022, one of the people said.
Fang also said that China’s leadership understood that the regulatory changes Beijing introduced in 2021 would affect economic growth but was determined to tolerate the pains, the person said.
However, 2022 will be different year as it will have a series of significant events, including the key once-in-five-years Communist Party congress later this year, Fang said, according to that person.
Pro-Growth Message
HSBC analyst Steven Sun said the CSRC delivered a strong pro-growth message after its annual working conference.
“We can expect more proactive fiscal and monetary policies, stimulus through green and tech investments, and another round of nationwide consumption boosting measures,” he said.
The Chinese regulator called the meeting against the backdrop of a slowdown in growth in the world’s second-largest economy amid its struggles with sporadic small-scale Covid-19 outbreaks and the darkening outlook for its indebted property sector.
The economy grew by 4% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, its weakest expansion in 1-1/2 years and China’s central bank has already started cutting interest rates and pumping more cash into the financial system in response.
The International Monetary Fund said on Friday that China’s economic recovery was advanced but imbalanced because of weak consumption, and also warned of uncertainty brought by regulatory crackdowns on the tech sector and slowing productivity.
Chinese regulators last year took aim at tech giants, private education companies and other firms, targeting unfair competition and data governance.
- Reuters, with additional editing by George Russell
READ MORE:
CSRC on a mission to delist ‘zombie enterprises’
CSRC Approves 3 Stocks for Shenzhen Growth Board – Xinhua
CSRC tweaks Securities Law on activities of VC firms
