China has appointed Wu Qing – a capital markets veteran – to head the nation’s securities watchdog, an appointment that will place a cumulative US$11 trillion in value under his supervision as one of several measures laid down by Beijing to blunt a downturn.
Wu, who ran the Shanghai Stock Exchange between 2016 and 2017, has been appointed chairman and party chief of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). He will succeed Yi Huiman, who had been in the position since 2019, state media outlet Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
Before this promotion, Wu – who holds a PhD in economics – was deputy party chief of the financial centre of Shanghai. He was entrusted to run the Shanghai Stock Exchange following a 2015 slump in China’s capital markets.
Before his stint in Shanghai and the city’s bourse, he had worked at the CSRC for years, overseeing its departments of fund and institutional supervision as well as its risk disposal office for securities companies.
The appointment came after the regulator announced a set of policies to prevent a stock market rout and lift investor sentiment since last week, including curbs on short selling and an intervention by state fund Central Huijin Investment to increase stock holdings in the market.
Beijing has laid out an ambitious plan to turn the country into a financial superpower to better support the real economy, and President Xi Jinping has said preventing and resolving financial risks must be an “eternal theme” for the government.
The top leadership also highlighted concerns over the fragility of its financial system, particularly as China faces an increasingly turbulent geopolitical environment, grapples with a property crisis and attempts to buoy weakened confidence across the economy, all of which have hampered a solid and sustained recovery.
