Guo Shuqing
Foreign media are reporting that Guo Shuqing, chairman of the Communist Party’s Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, has been a key figure leading the fight against Ant Group since the government halted its IPO last November, and that Guo’s power has continued to rise, even to the point of pushing Xi Jinping‘s top minister Liu He.
The Financial Times reports that Chinese government officials and advisers have revealed that Guo Shuqing is rising in stature and putting pressure on the regulator that had approved the Ant Group IPO.
The People’s Bank of China tightened its grip on Ant Group last month, introducing a new draft anti-monopoly law that could force the group’s payments unit to be spun off, the report said. CCP government officials revealed that Guo Shuqing played a major role in introducing the new regulatory tools and that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping approved the moves.
In a speech at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Guo Shuqing described China’s fintech applications as “crossing the river by feeling the stones” in terms of legal regulation and risk supervision overall, according to a press release posted on the website of the Communist Party’s CBRC on Dec. 8, 2020.
Guo said at the Time that China should also be concerned about the risk of a new type of “too big to fail”. He also said that some large technology companies involved in various financial and technology fields, cross-border mixed business, “timely and accurate demolition of bombs to eliminate new systemic risk potential.”
Guo Shuqing’s comments were then seen as pointing to the Ant Group, which had just been suspended from the market. More purges followed, targeting Ant Group and Alibaba.
The Financial Times reported that Xi has long distrusted private entrepreneurs, believing them to be a threat to the Communist regime.
The newspaper quoted a People’s Bank of China adviser as saying that Xi Jinping wants to regulate the financial sector, and that Guo Shuqing carried out Xi’s intentions by cracking down on the Ant Group, thus cementing Guo Shuqing’s position as China’s 2nd most powerful finance official, behind Xi’s most trusted aide, Communist Party Premier Liu He.
Xi, Liu He and Guo Shuqing are all said to agree that strong regulation is the way to address the so-called “weaknesses of the market economy.
A former official and two current advisers at the People’s Bank of China have revealed that Guo Shuqing wants to succeed Liu He.
But Chen Long of the Beijing-based consulting firm Plenum argued that Liu He is extremely powerful and he doesn’t think anyone will succeed him.
Born in 1956, Guo Shuqing was a longtime member of the Communist Party’s National Economic Reform Commission, exiled to Guizhou province as vice governor in 1998, and since 2001 has served as vice governor of the Communist Party’s central bank, chairman of the Construction Bank, chairman of the Securities Regulatory Commission, and governor of Shandong province, before becoming chairman of the Communist Party’s Banking Regulatory Commission in 2017. In 2018, the Communist Party’s Banking Regulatory Commission and Insurance Regulatory Commission merged to form the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, with Guo Shuqing serving as the first chairman of the CPC CBRC, and is also the secretary of the party committee and vice governor of the People’s Bank of China.
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