China’s Communist Party Centralizes Power Over Finance and Pollution Control
The plan unveiled on Tuesday calls for merging the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.
By KEITH BRADSHER and CHRIS BUCKLEYMARCH 12, 2018
BEIJING — The Chinese government said on Tuesday that it planned to overhaul supervision of the country’s debt-ridden financial sector, its environmental regulators
and other essential government agencies in a broad move intended to further consolidate the Communist Party’s hold on official levers of power.
Mr. Xi did create a lightly staffed financial supervisory commission last summer, which Mr. Liu
is expected to take charge of in the coming days, that oversees all the regulatory agencies.
At the same time, both agencies would relinquish some of their broad policy responsibilities to China’s central bank, which
would acquire an even greater role in preserving financial stability in what is now the world’s second-largest economy.
Liu He, President Xi’s right-hand man in overseeing the economy
and financial system, outlined the party’s central role in the reorganization in a lengthy statement published on Tuesday morning in People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.
But the China Securities Regulatory Commission needed to stay separate from the new banking and insurance agency, they suggested, because its role involves overseeing markets, in which customers know
that they are taking a risk that they may not recover their investments.
Premier Li Keqiang asked the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, to approve a plan
that would combine China’s banking and insurance regulators in an effort to bolster their ability to monitor financial institutions.