BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s top financial market regulator said on Saturday that “stabilising the market, stabilising confidence and stabilising expectations” were priorities as the government works to provide better access to capital for leading technology.
Wu Qing, who took over as the head of China’s Securities Regulatory Commission a year ago when China’s stock markets were sliding, said regulators had been working to restore confidence since late September, when Beijing rolled out a series of stimulus measures.
Those measures, Wu said, support President Xi Jinping’s goal of making China a “financial power” and creating capital-market funding opportunities for companies with innovative technology.
“In today’s world, finance is a battleground for the great powers,” Wu said in remarks published by Qiushi, the official policy publication of the Chinese Communist Party.
China’s blue-chip CSI300 index is up more than 20% since Beijing unveiled monetary and fiscal stimulus in late September, although the market has shed more than half its initial gains.
Many overseas investors want more clarity on U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for China and Beijing’s response.
Trump said on Friday he was imposing 10% tariffs on goods from China, as well as 25% levies on imports from Canada and Mexico. He had said in a Fox News interview aired on Thursday, however, that he believed he could make a deal with China on trade.
Wu said in his essay that the focus for capital markets in China had shifted from “scale expansion” to more targeted support for key technologies, in line with Xi’s priority for development of industries like artificial intelligence, biosciences, robotics and others the president has labelled “new productive forces”.
The regulator said despite the scale of China’s stock and bond markets – the world’s second-largest – and the number of listed companies, there was not enough financing support for innovation.
“The structure is not reasonable. The scientific and technological content of listed companies is too low, and the market has not fully played its role in supporting innovation and industrial innovation,” he said.
(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by William Mallard)
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