Measures set to stabilize finance market

China's top financial regulators pledged on Monday to strengthen financial market stability amid rising global volatility while advancing the sector's opening-up, unveiling a series of measures to enhance liquidity support and facilitate cross-border investment.

Speaking at the opening of the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2026 in Beijing, Wu Qing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said maintaining capital market stability remains a top priority, warning of growing spillover risks as volatility across global equity, bond and foreign exchange markets becomes increasingly interconnected.

To strengthen 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 approved the registration of the country's first batch of 18 actively managed exchange-traded funds on Monday, a move Wu said will bring additional capital into the market.

Listed companies will be encouraged to increase share buybacks and purchases by major shareholders, Wu said, while calling for heightened vigilance against leveraged products traded overseas that are linked to individual A-share stocks.

Also at the opening, Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, announced plans to establish a liquidity backstop for large-scale redemptions by nonbank financial institutions, as a new macroprudential tool to stabilize the bond market.

The facility would be activated under specific circumstances when asset managers face widespread liquidity stress and bond markets enter a negative feedback loop of redemptions and forced selling, while balancing systemic risk prevention against moral hazard.

Eligible institutions will 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 expand access to its standing lending facility — a monetary policy tool that provides collateralized financing to meet temporary liquidity needs — to cover all domestic deposit-taking financial institutions, including locally incorporated foreign banks.

Pan said the central bank will roll out a pilot to allow overseas financial institutions to participate in renminbi trading in China's interbank foreign exchange market and extend access to its RMB repo facility — aimed at helping specific overseas institutions obtain yuan liquidity — to foreign-funded RMB clearing banks.

Wu said the CSRC will facilitate investment under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor scheme, support domestic and international institutions in collaborating to launch more index products based on Chinese financial assets, and accelerate 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 healthcare, and green finance.

Zhu Hexin, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said the regulator will introduce a package of capital account foreign exchange reforms to facilitate enterprises' cross-border investment and financing, while expanding a pilot program allowing securities firms to conduct foreign exchange settlement and sales.

Pan also outlined future monetary policy framework reforms, including studying a shift toward overnight operations as the mainstay of open market operations, making the overnight repo rate the principal policy rate.

The PBOC will also promote more diversified loan pricing benchmarks beyond the loan prime rate and further phase out benchmark deposit and lending rates, while promoting connectivity between the interbank bond market and the exchange bond market, Pan added.

Also on Monday, the PBOC, together with 10 other departments, rolled out a guideline on enhancing financial support for building global sci-tech innovation hubs in Beijing, Shanghai and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Zhang Linwan contributed to this story.