Zhou Xiaochuan, the longest-serving governor of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), won the UK's 2019 Central Banking lifetime achievements award.

“The former People's Bank of China governor stands out for his high levels of integrity, intellectual rigor and bold reforms that have served the public interest in China and elsewhere,” Central Banking said in an article. 

Zhou is the sixth winner of the awards, which was set up to highlight the outstanding performance and achievements of individuals and organizations within the central banking community. Former winners include the American Donald Kohn and French Jacques de Larosière.

The article in the publication described the 71-year-old banker as a “bold reformer”, whose leadership has “significantly upgraded institutional capacity and credibility of the PBOC” and helped PBOC turn into an apex macroeconomic problem-solver for China.

From 2002 to 2018, Zhou has contributed in many areas, including exchange rate and interest rate liberalization, financial services and capital market reform, and capital account convertibility and RMB internationalization.

Managing director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde told Central Banking that Zhou has “successfully steered monetary policy while structural transformation was in full swing, contributing importantly to China's sustained growth to become the second-largest economy in the world.”

One of the major reforms that he has done was related to the Chinese currency. RMB remained fixed at 8.2 to the U.S. dollar since the Asian financial crisis to 2005. According to the publication, since China joined the World Trade Organization(WTO) in 2001, the country's exchange rate policy has faced criticism from global peers. RMB was criticized for being undervalued. The government was worried that a currency appreciation would damage the ability of regional governments to repay their loans. The PBOC announced it was de-pegging the yuan from the dollar and shifting to a managed floating exchange rate system with reference to a basket of currencies in 2005.

“He has the skills to manage to expand the loan scale, he can manage to keep the price level at a steady level at the same,” said Wang Jianhui, general manager of Capital Securities. “From 2005 to 2018, the outstanding loan has increased by 6.1 times, at the same time, the medium monthly CPI (Consumer Price Index) has remained under two percent.”

Zhou has also made contributions to internationalize the yuan. He has been promoting the use of the Chinese yuan.

“From 2005 to 2018, the RMB payment in the global payment system has increased from 35th to 5th,” said Wang.

Zhou got his Ph.D. in automation and systems engineering from Tsinghua University in 1985. He has been a member of the State Commission for Restructuring the Economic System from 1986 to 1991. He served as the Vice President of Bank of China from 1991 to 1995. He was the head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) from 1995 to 1996. 

He moved to the PBOC as a deputy governor from 1996 to 1998. Then he spent two years as president of China Construction from 2000 to 2002. After that, he was pointed as the governor of the PBOC in December 2002.

Zhou retired as governor of the PBOC in March 2018, for the past 15 years, Zhou led the central bank through major reforms and transformed it to one of the most important central banks in the world.

Last year, Zhou said at his last press conference as PBOC governor that China was ready for bolder measures, like accelerating market access measures to improve the connectivity between Chinese capital markets and other major global centers.