After 15 years at the helm of the People’s Bank of China — the longest of any PBoC governor — Zhou Xiaochuan is expected to step down around the time of the Chinese Communist party congress this year that will mark the start of President Xi Jinping’s second five-year term.Under the 69-year-old Mr Zhou’s leadership, a gradual opening of China’s capital account has allowed the market a greater role in determining the value of the renminbi and the currency’s slow but steady internationalisation.Despite his reputation as one of the government’s most powerful reform advocates, Mr Zhou’s final year in office will be remembered more for setbacks in that area than accomplishments.Advances on opening the capital account have been halted with the recent imposition of foreign exchange controls to combat capital flight. The PBoC has also been criticised for the lack of transparency in the new process for setting the renminbi’s “daily fix” against the US dollar.PBoC watchers believe one of the men below will succeed Mr Zhou. Whoever it is will play an important role in restoring and advancing Mr Zhou’s reformist legacy — or further tarnishing it.
Guo Shuqing
The China Banking Regulatory Commission chairman is the technocrats’ choice to lead the PBoC. Like Mr Zhou, Mr Guo, 61, rose to prominence in the 1990s under Zhu Rongji, the former premier who pushed through a series of difficult economic and financial reforms and negotiated China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation.Mr Guo was summoned back to Beijing this year after serving as Shandong province governor, the second highest provincial post after party secretary, for four years. He was appointed head of the CBRC with a mandate to clean up risky practices in the sector. Under his leadership, the CBRC has launched a review of banks’ dealings with four of China’s most acquisitive groups. News of the review, which emerged on Thursday, sent shockwaves through the global M&A industrySupporters of Mr Guo — who had previously been a PBoC vice-governor and led the foreign exchange regulator, securities regulator and one of the “big four” state banks — have speculated that his CBRC appointment was part of a plan to create a long-discussed, PBoC-led “super regulator” under him. But senior Chinese officials say that it is enough to appoint tough, committed reformers to lead the PBoC, CBRC and the securities and insurance regulators. Jiang Chaoliang The 59-year-old Hubei province party secretary, emerged as a possible PBoC successor only recently. Andrew Polk at Trivium, a Beijing-based economic consultancy, calls Mr Jiang the “frontrunner” with a “stellar” CV for the PBoC job. Mr Jiang has alternated between provincial leadership posts and top finance jobs, including stints running China Development Bank, the largest policy bank, and a big-four state lender. He has been promoted three times by Mr Xi since 2014.He also played a lead role in the resolution of China’s largest ever bankruptcy — the $5bn default of Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corporation in 1999. In that capacity he worked closely with Wang Qishan, then Guangdong vice-governor, now head of Mr Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.Before his work on Gitic, Mr Jiang ran the PBoC’s office in Shenzhen, one of its most important regional branches.Liu Shiyu The head of the securities regulator was not well known before he was chosen for the role last year. But he has since distinguished himself as an outspoken and politically savvy operator, and established himself as many analysts’ dark-horse candidate for Mr Zhou’s job.Most of this career has been spent at the PBoC, where he rose through the ranks and served eight years as a vice-governor. Mr Liu, 56, inherited a securities regulator in disarray. His predecessor had done little to discourage a stock market bubble that burst in 2015 and then had a significant role in a botched government rescue when the market collapsed.While the benchmark CSI 300 is up about 20 per cent since Mr Liu’s appointment, he has not lived up to his name, which investors note has the phonetic similarity with the phrase “bull-market rain” in Chinese. He has instead established himself as a regulatory hawk bent on rooting out market malpractice and ballooning financial risks.Last year he attacked “barbarian” insurers who used huge amounts of leverage to build up large positions in listed companies. Within weeks corruption investigators were sweeping through the sector.“I was shocked by the chaos I saw in financial markets after I took office,” Mr Liu said this year, adding that the regulator would “get even with financial crocodiles who have hurt small investors”. Yi GangThe leading in-house candidate to replace Mr Zhou has served as deputy governor of the PBoC since 2008.A fluent English speaker who spent eight years in the US, where he completed his doctorate and taught at Indiana University, Mr Yi’s selection would be welcomed by his global peers, for whom he has become a familiar face at international events. Mr Yi, 59, returned to China in 1994 and took a position at Beijing University, before moving to the PBoC in 1997. His supporters say he would be an excellent choice for an institution that has worked hard to improve its communications with the outside world since an August 2015 change to the formula used to calculate the renminbi’s daily fix sparked panic on global financial markets.However, fluent English speakers who are popular on the international conference circuit rarely succeed in competitions for highly sought-after Chinese government posts.