Lujiazui Forum 2013 opened today in Shanghai. Zhou Xiaochuan, head of China’s Central Bank, delivers a speech at the thematic meeting. He pointed out that building Shanghai into China’s international financial center is an inevitable choice in the process of China’s modernization and the overall intensification of reform and opening up.

Zhou Xiaochuan says over the years, efforts to construct Shanghai into a financial center have achieved remarkable results and gained high attention and support from the financial community. In recent years, a lot of fruitful work has been done to strengthen Shanghai’s competitiveness as an international financial center. The construction of financial market system was the core while financial reform and innovation being the focus.

Zhou Xiaochuan asserts in the process of China’s modernization program and overall intensification of reform and opening up, a financial center of its own is critical. And building Shanghai into a financial center is China’s inevitable choice.

Shanghai has always been at the forefront of development in China‘s capital market. it pushed forward the optimization and innovation of China’s financial and economic reform as well as the distribution method of social resources. Zhou Xiaochuan believes displaying the core function of Shanghai’s capital market is a realistic choice for Shanghai’s economic and social development and its serving the whole country. It follows the inner law of the construction of international financial center and the financial development for mature markets. It is also a precondition of continuously pushing forward the construction of Shanghai into an international financial center.