China’s central bank has unveiled an ambitious five-year agenda to expand the international role of the renminbi and advance toward unrestricted access to the country’s onshore financial markets, while rejecting currency depreciation as a means of gaining a trade advantage.
At a State Council Information Office briefing in Beijing on Thursday, officials from the People’s Bank of China, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and the China Securities Regulatory Commission explained how the financial sector would implement a newly released blueprint for building China into a financial powerhouse during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, from 2026 to 2030.
The plan establishes two key milestones. By 2030, China aims to have a modern financial system with Chinese characteristics in place, featuring coordinated policy tools, a more efficient market structure and continued high-standard opening-up. By 2035, the country intends to have largely completed a modern financial system that is adaptable, competitive and inclusive.
Lu Lei, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, described the internationalization of the yuan as an “irreversible trend.” Overseas institutions now hold more than 11 trillion yuan, or about $1.6 trillion, in onshore renminbi-denominated financial assets, while outstanding offshore yuan loans have exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, he said.
Lu said monetary stability and financial stability remain the central bank’s core objectives. Achieving them, he added, requires a dual-pillar framework built around monetary policy and macroprudential management.
Broadening Market Access
To encourage wider global use of the currency, the central bank will promote bilateral local-currency settlement and expand its network of currency swap arrangements. It currently maintains 33 active swap agreements with overseas counterparts, with a combined value of 4.6 trillion yuan.
Lu said the bank would also help foreign central banks establish regular policy tools that use yuan swap funding to support trade and investment.
The most significant change concerns capital-account opening. The People’s Bank of China plans to strengthen links between domestic and international financial markets by improving programs such as Stock Connect, Bond Connect and Swap Connect. Lu said the long-term goal is to move toward full opening of the onshore market.
Analysts said the approach could mark a gradual shift away from channel-based access, under which foreign investors enter China through designated programs, toward broader and more direct participation in onshore financial assets.
Adjusting the Monetary Policy Framework
On monetary policy, Lu outlined a framework that will give greater importance to interest rate adjustments while gradually reducing reliance on quantitative intermediate targets such as money-supply growth.
He said the central bank would firmly maintain the currency’s value to support economic growth, while keeping total social financing and money-supply growth broadly aligned with economic expansion and expected price levels.
Lu also addressed exchange-rate policy, saying China operates a managed floating system in which market forces play a decisive role in price formation. The central bank, he added, remains focused on preventing herd behavior and the self-reinforcement of irrational expectations.
China has neither the need nor the intention to pursue a competitive trade advantage by weakening its currency, Lu said. He noted that Chinese trade has become less sensitive to exchange-rate movements as exporters have gained bargaining power, improved their currency-risk management and increased the use of the yuan in trade settlement.
Outlook for the Balance of Payments
Li Bin, deputy administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said China’s balance of payments is expected to remain broadly stable during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, supported by better coordination between imports and exports and growing two-way investment flows.
He said funds generated by China’s current-account surplus are being reinvested in the global economy through overseas industrial and financial investments, supporting industries and financial markets in partner countries. China’s external assets totaled nearly $12 trillion by the end of 2025, he added.
Li said the foreign exchange regulator would advance reforms designed to create a system that is more convenient, open, secure and efficient. Measures include simplifying approval procedures for compliant businesses and improving coordination between yuan and foreign-currency policies so that companies can conduct cross-border transactions under a unified framework.
The regulator will also strengthen macroprudential oversight and monitor cross-border capital flows more closely to safeguard balance-of-payments stability, he said.
Reforming the Capital Markets
Li Chao, vice-chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said the regulator would accelerate a new phase of capital-market reform and opening-up, further strengthening market stability and improving returns for investors.
Medium- and long-term institutional investors, including social security, pension and insurance funds, have made combined net purchases of more than 600 billion yuan in A shares since the beginning of the year, he said.
The coordinated statements from China’s three financial regulators underscore Beijing’s effort to present a unified approach to financial opening. The push to internationalize the renminbi comes as its use in global trade settlement expands, although its share of global foreign-exchange reserves remains limited compared with the US dollar and euro.
If implemented, the move toward full onshore market access would represent a departure from the incremental strategy China has followed since introducing Stock Connect in 2014. The program allows overseas investors to trade mainland-listed shares through Hong Kong without granting unrestricted access to the domestic market. Bond Connect, launched in 2017, similarly provides a designated route into China’s interbank bond market.
For international investors, the roadmap indicates that barriers to direct participation in China’s financial markets could continue to decline over the next five years, even as the central bank maintains its focus on currency stability and the management of capital flows.