The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) disciplinary authority has announced the launch of two-month inspections of China’s banking regulator as part of broader scrutiny of the country’s financial sector.
On 11 October the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) announced that its 4th Inspection Team would send inspectors to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) for a period of approximately two months, after convening a “mobilisation meeting” with CBIRC’s party committee.
“The 4th Inspection Team conducting an inspection of CBIRC is a comprehensive political examination and deep political baptism for CBIRC’s entire system,” Guo Shuqing (郭树清), chair and party secretary of CBIRC.
“It embodies the party’s high level of focus on banking and insurance regulatory work…all levels of party organisations and party members and cadres within the system must continually raise their political judgement, political awareness and political execution ability, and uphold the ideology of Xi Jinping’s socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era.”
CCDI also announced that its 5th Inspection Team had convened a mobilisation meeting with the party committee for Evergrande Group, and that it would also dispatch inspection staff to Evergrande Group for a two month period.
According to a report from Bloomberg the CCP has launched an eight round of inspections for a total of 25 financial institutions and authorities, including the People’s Bank of China, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the stock exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as the country’s big state-owned banks, and asset managers including China Huarong Asset Management.
CCDI head Zhao Leiji previously said that the inspections will focus on “gaps in political awareness” amongst the leadership of party organisations within financial authorities and institutions, as well as problems that impede the “high-quality development of the finance sector.”
CCDI’s last round of inspections of the financial sector commenced in late 2015, and scrutinised a total of 21 organisations.
