Tim Hofer

44 posts

Shanghai Stock Exchange releases development plan for 2021-2025

  • Tim Hofer
  • Posted on
The SSE’s plans for the coming years are, not surprisingly, aligned with the development central policymakers want to see in China’s capital markets. Beijing’s overarching goal is to drive more of Chinese citizens’ savings into stocks and bonds and away from simple bank deposits and real estate…
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PBoC to expand industries covered in banks’ climate risk stress tests

  • Tim Hofer
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The climate risk stress test aims to get banks accustomed to integrating climate considerations into all their operations, including lending. It is not intended to limit banks’ exposure to these sectors – at least not for now – especially when regulators want banks to ramp up lending to drive China’s economic recovery…
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CBIRC releases five-year plan for development of insurance standards

  • Tim Hofer
  • Posted on
As is often the case with long-range plans, the CBIRC’s FYP on insurance standardization provides more of a big picture overview and broad objectives and contains few details. However, it does shed light on policymakers’ intent to improve the level of sophistication in the insurance industry partly in order to bolster other major policy objectives such as rural revitalization, sci-tech development, supply-side structural reform, and the development of a third-pillar pension industry…
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PBoC holds video conference on implementation of economic support measures

The government, and the PBoC, are under pressure to show they are taking action to support an economy that likely contracted in the second quarter of 2022, mainly as a result of the zero-COVID policy. The PBoC needs to get the message out to banks that monetary policy decisions and measures set by the State Council must be implemented, although the most recent ones are mainly an expansion, extension, and doubling-down on actions that are already being taken…
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SAFE, PBoC expect RMB stabilization

This isn’t bravado. Regulators are genuinely more comfortable with financial outflows and RMB volatility than they once were. That’s largely due to the fact that, if the RMB is ever to become an international currency, financial investors need to be able to trust that they can move their money in and out of China freely…
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CBIRC releases support measures for pandemic-hit sectors

Implementation of these measures will provide some support for pandemic-hit businesses to survive, although it might also be storing up problems for banks further down the road. That said, for businesses to genuinely prosper this year and beyond, they will need larger stimulus measures in the short term and ultimately, an environment free of pandemic disruption…
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Politburo meeting pledges economic support measures

As China continues to deploy stringent lockdown measures to contain the Omicron variant of COVID-19, hopes for achieving the 5.5% growth target put forward in March have all but vanished. Even so, policymakers remain reluctant to resort to broad-based stimulus and are instead looking for ways to support beleaguered industries and businesses at the margins…
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John Lee appointed as the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong

We can expect that under John Lee, the Hong Kong government will continue to push for further economic integration with mainland China. However, the change in administration in Hong Kong will probably not have a major impact on the broader development of the GBA, since much of the driving force behind GBA integration is coming from the central government and Guangdong provincial government rather than from the Hong Kong special administrative region…
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