Banking crucial for improving system

Ted Tokuchi has been in China for a long time, so long that he is highly regarded by the government as one of the few "foreign experts" who has been with China through its past 40 years of reforms. Likewise his views among his friends in Beijing's financial business circle.

In a recent conversation with China Daily, Tokuchi, managing director and chairman of investment banking committee of CITIC Securities Co, talked about China's efforts to transition to a slower but more resilient type of growth, after three decades of fast but fragile growth driven by exports and government investment.

Some people seem to think the transition should be simple, a one-off deal, like hopping from point A to point B. But Tokuchi said it is not as easy as that, as it is something "very large", "covering nearly all aspects of Chinese society".