March 29, 2014, the fifth Unirule China Entrepreneur Research Center Saloon was held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. The theme of this saloon was “Internet Finance and the Opportunity for Private-owned Banks”. This saloon was joined by famous economist Professor WANG Guoxiang; Professor ZHANG Shuguang, President of Unirule Academic Committee; Professor FENG Xingyuan, Deputy Director of Unirule and Director of UCERC; and Mr. WU Qing, Deputy Director of Bank Research Room at Development Research Center of the State Council. Professor FENG Xingyuan gave the opening speech on behalf of UCERC. He stressed the role of “friend of thoughts” played by UCERC for Chinese entrepreneurs and introduced UCERC’s recent work. Four guest speakers gave 30-minute speeches each and around 300 participants attended the event. 
In the keynote speech on “China’s Macroeconomic Trend and Internet Finance” by Professor ZHANG Shuguang, he emphasized four important aspects. Firstly, the structural problems of China’s economy is eminent as the investment-led growth pattern is not sustainable and there is a problem of over-capacity. Secondly, new urbanization is an important path for urban development in China as it opens market for the reallocation of resources. Thirdly, institutional arrangements should be made to improve citizens’ livelihood. And to do this, a starting point could be reform of the taxation structure. And lastly, financial innovation and regulation have always been developing hand in hand. And now only five private-owned banks have been approved by China Banking Regulatory Commission, which is far from sufficient for real financial reform. Financial reform cannot be completed without breaking financial monopoly. What’s more, on the development of Internet finance, Professor ZHANG Shuguang pointed out that there is strong technological support and large market demand for Internet finance. What differentiate it from traditional finance is that Internet finance is a kind of commonly benefiting finance which achieved in a couple of years what has been achieved in hundreds of years for traditional finance. And this could be good to break the financial monopoly. Online and offline financial services should be combined to compete with traditional finance. 
Professor WANG Guoxiang spoke on “Resource Allocation and Interest Rate Liberalization”. He pointed out that Internet finance and private-owned banks could be considered as financial innovation. Financial innovation consists of innovation of financial institutions, instruments, and pricing mechanism. And the latter refers to interest rate liberalization. The core of financial reform is the interest rate liberalization which should be done by free market competition and the equilibrium of demand and supply. Interest rate liberalization is the precondition for efficient financial resource allocation. He then commented as he talked about the relation between interest rate liberalization and exchange rate liberalization that the biggest obstacle for China’s interest rate liberalization is that there is no matching exchange rate market mechanism. And this is also why People’s Bank of China would not ease regulation over exchange rate in order to avoid arbitrage. Totally 2 Pages,Now on the 1 Page 1 2 |
