(EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH CSRC VICE CHAIRMAN)
By CGTN’s Martina Fuchs
In an exclusive interview, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), Fang Xinghai, told CGTN on the sidelines of the Boao Forum that he is cautiously optimistic about the inclusion of China's A shares in the MSCI index this year, and that the country's top securities regulator will speed up the approval of new listings.
China will focus on stable development of its capital markets this year, but will press ahead to further open its markets to foreign companies, he said.
Asked about the financial reforms and new regulations the CSRC is planning to launch, Fang stressed:
“We are very determined to speed up the IPO process so that more companies can be listed in China… Secondly, there are always some bad guys who want to manipulate stock prices, who do insider trading. We want to crack down on this misbehavior in a very severe and sustainable way.”
Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of China’s top securities regulator CSRC, talks exclusively to CGTN at the Boao Forum for Asia. /CGTN Photo
Chinese regulators have turned their sights on controlling risks in financial markets as speculative activity and leverage in the economy rise, with the securities regulator vowing to clear out "abnormal phenomena" from capital markets.
China's crackdown on illegal market activities has been intensified since the mid-2015 stock market crash that wiped out almost 3 trillion US dollars of share value.
Fang also said he was cautiously optimistic that this year China’s A shares will be included in the key MSCI emerging markets index. “China is such a big emerging market, frankly without the A shares in the MSCI that index is not really a global emerging market index,” he said.
China has been losing out to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq on key technology listings, so more IPOs at home could mean millions of yuan in revenue for Chinese investment banks, which dominate domestic stock issuance.
Fang made headlines and was hailed as a new “superstar” at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016 when he said that China was learning to communicate seamlessly with its market.
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