China Announces New Measures to Strengthen Financial Market Stability

China’s top financial regulators pledged on Monday to strengthen market stability amid heightened global volatility and to continue opening the sector, unveiling a series of measures aimed at boosting liquidity support and facilitating cross‑border investment.

At the opening of the 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Conference in Beijing, Wu Qing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), said preserving capital‑market stability is a top priority, cautioning that growing spill‑over risks are emerging as volatility across global equities, bonds and foreign‑exchange markets becomes increasingly interconnected.

To reinforce market resilience, the CSRC will improve long‑term performance assessment mechanisms for institutional investors, broaden channels for medium‑ and long‑term capital inflows and deepen mutual‑fund reforms.

The regulator on Monday approved the registration of the country’s first batch of 18 actively managed exchange‑traded funds, a step Wu said will attract additional capital to the market.

Wu encouraged listed companies to step up share buybacks and purchases by major shareholders, while urging heightened vigilance against leveraged products traded abroad that are linked to individual A‑share stocks.

Also at the opening, Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China, announced plans to establish a liquidity backstop for large‑scale redemptions by non‑bank financial institutions, introducing a new macro‑prudential tool to stabilize the bond market.

The facility would be triggered under specific circumstances when asset managers confront widespread liquidity stress and bond markets fall into a negative feedback loop of redemptions and forced selling, balancing systemic‑risk mitigation against moral hazard.

Eligible institutions would include bank wealth‑management subsidiaries, mutual‑fund managers and their parent banks or securities firms, Pan said.

On financial opening‑up, Pan said the PBOC will broaden access to its standing lending facility — a monetary‑policy tool that provides collateralized financing for temporary liquidity needs — to all domestic deposit‑taking financial institutions, including locally incorporated foreign banks.

The central bank will launch a pilot to enable overseas financial institutions to participate in renminbi trading on China’s interbank foreign‑exchange market and will extend access to its RMB repo facility — designed to help specific overseas institutions obtain yuan liquidity — to foreign‑funded RMB clearing banks, Pan said.

Wu said the CSRC will facilitate investment under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor scheme, support domestic and international institutions in collaborating to launch additional index products based on Chinese financial assets, and speed up efforts to include RMB‑denominated stock‑trading counters and real‑estate investment trusts in the Stock Connect programs.

Ding Xiangqun, minister of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, pledged to deepen institutional opening‑up, improve the regulatory environment for foreign institutions and encourage their participation in wealth management, pension and health‑care, and green finance.

Zhu Hexin, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said the regulator will roll out a package of capital‑account foreign‑exchange reforms to facilitate enterprises’ cross‑border investment and financing, while expanding a pilot program that allows securities firms to conduct foreign‑exchange settlement and sales.

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