This photo taken on March 20, 2024 shows tulips at the Bund area in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Zhang Jiansong)
BEIJING, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- In recent years, the city of Shanghai has made remarkable progress in constructing international financial center and global asset management center, and is expected to further enhance opening-up and international cooperation in the future, experts said.
The remarks were made by participants at the recently-held Global Asset Management Forum (GAMF) 2024 Shanghai Suhewan Conference in east China's Shanghai, where Xie Dong, vice mayor of Shanghai noted that the city is to achieve larger-scale, broader-range and higher-level high-quality financial development, pioneering the national efforts of financial reform.
-- Large concentration of financial factor markets
Bringing together a variety of factor markets including stocks, bonds, futures, currencies, bills, foreign exchange, gold, insurance, trusts and so on, the city of Shanghai is one of the cities with the largest concentration of financial factor markets in the world.
With years of development, the city has made steady progress in the construction of an international financial center, with well-established financial market systems featured by active trading, according to Xie.
Shanghai's financial market has seen a total trading volume of more than 2,633 trillion yuan (about 368.62 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first three quarters of this year, up 3.4 percent year on year.
The city has become a magnet for domestic and overseas financial institutions, hosting over 1,770 licensed financial institutions, of which more than one-third being foreign-funded.
Global asset allocation and risk management capabilities are essential for an international financial center, according to Jin Penghui, director of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) Shanghai Head Office and president of PBOC Shanghai Branch, noting that constructing global asset management center is also a must-do for the city to serve the real economy.
Witnessing steady growth in overall scale, rapid gathering of diverse institutions, continuous product innovation and elevated level of internationalization, the city is representing a roughly 16-percent asset management scale of the global market, said Jin.
Domestic and foreign asset management institutions are encouraged to leverage their strengths and market experience to foster deeper cooperation across multiple dimensions including environmental, social, and governance (ESG), digital transformation, and talent development, in order to drive the transformation of global asset management industry, Jin suggested.
-- Cooperation, opening-up for shared development
Shanghai's construction of an international financial center is now at a critical stage of overall capability enhancement, with opening-up being the way to reach higher levels.
Foreign capitals are important contributors to China's financial market, said Lou Jiwei, chairman of GAMF and former Chinese finance minister, pointing out that promoting the construction of Shanghai international financial center not only serves China's financial development, but is also significant to the optimization of global financial landscape.
Amid growing divergence in global monetary policies, the investment and hedging attributes of RMB assets are highlighted, showing increasing appeals to global investors.
Therefore, it is important to further promote institutional opening-up of financial markets, with measures including improving business environment, refining market rules and systems, as well as boosting innovation of channels, products and services, said Jin.
Shang Fulin, a former banking regulation official further stressed the need to promote high-level financial opening-up through institutional opening-up, urging alignment with international high-standard trade and economic rules in the financial sector, so as to enhance the transparency, stability, and predictability of opening-up policies.
Finance has become a vital link connecting global economy in the era of globalization. Financial cooperation is a key driver of global economic growth and a vital pathway to achieving shared development, according to Shang. (Edited by Yu Huichen with Xinhua Silk Road, yuhuichen@xinhua.org)
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