Zhu Hexin, Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China and Administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), disclosed at the opening ceremony of the 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Conference on October 19 that, building on efforts to improve the effectiveness of existing policies and in response to new practical demands from enterprises identified during field research, SAFE plans to roll out a package of incremental measures to support enterprises in better participating in international cooperation and competition.

The new incremental measures focus on three areas. First, a set of policies to facilitate current account foreign exchange settlement will be introduced to better meet the diverse settlement needs of foreign trade enterprises and support new forms and models of trade. Second, policies will be launched to optimize capital account foreign exchange administration, so as to better satisfy enterprises’ needs for cross-border investment, financing and capital allocation and serve the strategies of “bringing in” and “going global”. Third, the foreign exchange market will pursue further opening-up. The pilot program for securities companies to conduct foreign exchange settlement and sale will be expanded. Financial institutions will be encouraged to provide exchange rate risk management services for enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, upgrade cross-border service capacity, support coordinated development of onshore and offshore financial markets, and advance RMB internationalization.

In recent years, SAFE has introduced successive policy packages to stabilize foreign trade, facilitate cross-border investment and financing, and support the development of pilot free trade zones. According to Zhu Hexin, by the end of September this year, these policies had benefited more than 150,000 market entities, covering business volume exceeding 3 trillion US dollars.

“China is opening wider to the outside world, and profound changes have taken place in the structure of its external economy,” said Zhu Hexin. A notable feature is that market entities have become an important force linking the domestic and international circulations.

In terms of flows, China’s balance of payments has gradually achieved a pattern of autonomous balance. Funds generated from current account surpluses are increasingly deployed through outbound investment and asset allocation by enterprises, banks and other market players. In terms of stocks, the share of external financial assets held by enterprises and banks in China’s total external financial assets rose from roughly 30% at the end of 2010 to nearly 70% at the end of 2025.

Zhu Hexin noted that these changes reflect deepened reform of China’s socialist market economy, continuous improvement of institutions for high-level opening-up, the growing role of the market in allocating cross-border resources, and the rising capacity of Chinese enterprises to engage in international cooperation and competition and allocate global resources.

To adapt to this trend, Zhu Hexin said foreign exchange administration has integrated “autonomy of enterprises in cross-border operations” and “development of an open ecosystem” into one governance framework. Authorities strive to energize market players, foster a sound ecosystem, expand opening-up and improve governance to better serve the new development paradigm.

On the one hand, market entities are granted greater flexibility to make foreign exchange usage more independent and convenient. By the end of June this year, over 50,000 creditworthy enterprises nationwide were eligible to handle foreign exchange business without document review, an increase of about 30% from the end of 2025. Their foreign exchange transactions exceeded 580 billion US dollars, doubling year on year, with average processing time cut by more than 50%.

On the other hand, the ecosystem is refined to create a better environment for enterprises’ cross-border operations. Closer coordination with financial institutions and local governments is prioritized, with improved incentive and restraint mechanisms to generate multiplier effects. A dual assessment mechanism covering “policies and ecosystem” has been established to support pilot initiatives in qualified regions, promote the nationwide rollout of proven practices, and realize coordinated improvement of both policies and the supporting ecosystem.

Source: Shanghai Securities News