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The Chinese Monetary System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Pierre-Henri Cassou
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Extract

During a visit to China in June 1973, a group of young civil servants from the École Nationale d'Administration, myself amongst them, had several interesting interviews, particularly with Han-leï and Wang Si-yi, two experts from the People's Bank of China, in Peking. This was, as far as I know, the first time since the Cultural Revolution that visitors have had the chance to gather official information on current Chinese monetary policy and on the role of the People's Bank in the economic life of the country. One can define the Chinese monetary and financial system by the following formula: the People's Bank, the sole autonomous financial institution, receives the deposits of private individuals, enterprises, people's communes and State departments, and it grants loans to enterprises

Type
Reports From China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 59 , September 1974 , pp. 559 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1974

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References

1. This article first appeared, in French and in longer form, in Bulletin del'Economie et des Finances, No. 64, 01 1974, pp. 55–68Google Scholar.

2. For the little work which has been done on China's internal financial system, see Miyashita, Tadao, The Currency and Financial System of Mainland China (Tokyo, 1966)Google Scholar, Hsiao, K. Huang, Money and Monetary Policy in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, both of which only cover the period, 1949–61. For translations of some more recent articles in the Chinese press describing the aid which the People's Bank has to give to enterprises see Chinese Economic Studies, Winter, 1973Google Scholar, and Documentazione sui Paesi dell' Est, December 1971.

3. This hypothesis could find further confirmation from information published in 1965, according to which, from 1952 to 1964, the sum of savings quintupled. Now, according to the figures published in 1961, individual deposits had already quintupled between 1952 and 1957. The deposits would therefore have been as great in 1964 as in 1957, which confirms the extent of the economic difficulties encountered between 1958 and 1961, i.e. at the time of the Great Leap Forward and immediately following it.

4. SeeStoSels, J., “Monnaie et financement en Chine,” Bulletin du Centre d'études des pays de l'est, Vol. 8 (1967)Google Scholar.

5. SeeHsiao, K. Huang, Money and Monetary Policy, pp. 130–31Google Scholar; and Miyashita, Tadao, Currency and Financial System, p. 205 for the figures for 1951 to 1961Google Scholar.

6. The Bank of China has direct responsibility for China's external financial relations, under the overall supervision since 1950 of the People's Bank. See, for example, The Banker, February, 1972, and Neue Zürchner Zeitung 24 September 1971.