SHANGHAI: China will seek to improve the flexibility of its yuan currency and will reduce restrictions on cross-border use of the yuan, the country’s central bank governor Yi Gang said on Saturday.

Yi said such moves were needed to promote the opening of the country’s financial services industry. He was speaking at the Bund Summit conference held in Shanghai.

China will “improve flexibility of the yuan, and let exchange rates play a better role as an automatic stabilizer in the macro economy and international balance of payments,” he said.

To promote yuan internationalisation, China will further improve the infrastructure for cross-border use of the yuan, he said.

China plans to expand several outbound investment schemes to meet onshore investors’ need to allocate assets globally, state news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday, following a steady strengthening in the yuan against the dollar.

Unfair competition on e-commerce platforms

Meanwhile, China’s market regulator and other government departments have launched an exercise focused on e-commerce, with plans to crack down on areas such as unfair competition and the illegal trading of counterfeits or wildlife, state news agency Xinhua said.

The operation will run until December and will also look into areas such as livestreaming, which has in the past two years become a popular sales channel in China, Xinhua said on Saturday, referring to a recently issued notice from the State Administration of Market Supervision and other departments.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2020