Accelerating the Construction of a Chinese-Path Modernization Financial System

Finance is the lifeblood of a modern economy. In advancing its modernization process, China has forged a path of socialist financial development with Chinese characteristics. As China enters the new journey of Chinese-path modernization, constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system is both the direction of China’s financial development and a new requirement for leveraging finance’s positive role in advancing the building of a strong country. The Central Financial Work Conference clearly stated that we must unswervingly follow the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics.

金融是现代经济的血脉。中国在推进现代化的进程中，走出了一条具有中国特色的社会主义金融发展道路。随着中国迈入中国式现代化新征程，构建中国式现代化金融体系既是中国金融发展的方向，又是发挥金融在推进强国建设中积极作用的新要求。中央金融工作会议明确提出，坚定不移走中国特色金融发展之路。

At present, China’s financial sector still faces problems such as the low quality and efficiency of financial services to the real economy, numerous hidden financial risks, weak financial regulation and governance capacity, and a low level of financial opening up. To this end, it is necessary to effectively raise political standing, adhere to a goal-oriented and problem-oriented approach, and grasp the main focal points for constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system.

当前，我国金融领域仍存在金融服务实体经济的质效不高、金融风险隐患较多、金融监管和治理能力薄弱、金融开放水平较低等问题。为此，要切实提高政治站位，坚持目标导向、问题导向，把握构建中国式现代化金融体系的主要着力点。

Further improve the systems and mechanisms for Party leadership over financial work. Upholding the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee is the essential requirement for constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system. Compared with the development of international finance, China’s financial work has always adhered to the centralized, unified leadership of the Party. From the Party Central Committee issuing the “Notice on Improving the Party Leadership System in the Financial System and Strengthening and Improving Party Work in the Financial System” in May 1998, establishing the Central Financial Work Commission and the Party committees of the financial system, to the “Plan for Reforming Party and State Institutions” issued in March 2023, establishing the Central Financial Commission and the Central Financial Work Commission, the systems and mechanisms for Party leadership over financial work have been continuously improved. This provides strong support for strengthening the top-level design of finance, clarifying the direction of financial reform, enhancing financial service functions, and preventing and responding to financial risks. On the basis of the financial work governance system with the “two commissions, one bank, one bureau, one commission” [1]1 The “two commissions, one bank, one bureau, one commission” refers to the Central Financial Commission, the Central Financial Work Commission, the People’s Bank of China, the National Financial Regulatory Administration, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, established or restructured in the 2023 institutional reform. as the main framework, improve the relevant systems for Party leadership over financial work, build a high-quality, professional financial cadre and talent team with strong political integrity, strong professional competence, and strong work style, fully leverage the positive role of financial commissions and financial work commissions at all levels in the top-level design, overall coordination, and comprehensive advancement of constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system, and effectively form a new pattern of financial work characterized by the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, joint management by all localities, a nationwide chessboard approach, and stability and efficiency.

进一步完善党领导金融工作的体制机制。坚持党中央的集中统一领导是构建中国式现代化金融体系的本质要求。相比于国际金融的发展，我国金融工作的开展始终坚持党的集中统一领导。从党中央于1998年5月印发《关于完善金融系统党的领导体制，加强与改进金融系统党的工作有关问题的通知》，设立中央金融工作委员会与金融系统党委，到2023年3月印发的《党和国家机构改革方案》，组建中央金融委员会、中央金融工作委员会，党领导金融工作的体制机制不断完善。这为加强金融顶层设计、明确金融改革方向、提高金融服务功能、防范和应对金融风险等方面提供了强大支撑。在以“两委一行一局一会”为主体框架的金融工作治理体系基础上，完善党领导金融工作的相关制度，打造政治过硬、能力过硬、作风过硬的高素质、专业化金融干部人才队伍，充分发挥各级金融委员会和金融工作委员会在构建中国式现代化金融体系的顶层设计、统筹协调、整体推进等方面的积极作用，切实形成党中央对金融工作的集中统一领导，各地齐抓共管、全国一盘棋、稳定高效的金融工作新格局。

Do a good job in coordinating legislation for key financial areas and emerging fields. Financial rule of law is an important guarantee for constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system. A complete financial legal system, law enforcement system, and judicial system are the basic prerequisites for clarifying the rights and obligations of financial entities, regulating the issuance and trading behavior of financial markets, ensuring the healthy and stable operation of modern financial activities, the yardstick for ensuring that financial innovation operates on a safe track, and a long-term mechanism for preventing financial fluctuations and financial risks. Therefore, it is necessary to improve basic laws such as the “Law of the People’s Bank of China” and the “Commercial Bank Law,” accelerate the revision and promulgation of laws and regulations in key areas such as the “Financial Stability Law” and the “Regulations on Non-Bank Payment Institutions,” accelerate the filling of legislative gaps in emerging fields such as new financial business forms and models under digital technology conditions, and further enrich and improve the basic legal hierarchy in the financial field. At the same time, strengthen legislative coordination with other fields, such as the “Enterprise Bankruptcy Law” and the “Anti-Monopoly Law” in commercial and economic areas, and deeply do a good job in the connection and coordination between the financial legal system and other relevant legal systems.

做好金融重点领域和新兴领域立法统筹。金融法治化是构建中国式现代化金融体系的重要保障。完备的金融法律体系、执法体系和司法体系是明确金融主体的权利义务关系、规范金融市场发行和交易行为、保障现代化金融活动健康稳定运行的基本前提，是保证金融创新行驶在安全轨道上的准绳，也是预防金融波动和金融风险的长效机制。因此，要健全《中国人民银行法》《商业银行法》等基础法律，加快修订和出台《金融稳定法》《非银行支付机构条例》等重点领域的法律法规，加快填补数字技术条件下金融新业态、新模式等新兴领域的立法空白，进一步丰富和完善金融领域基础性法律层次。同时加强与其他领域，如《企业破产法》《反垄断法》等商事、经济领域的立法协调，深入做好金融法律制度与其他相关法律制度的衔接配合。

Refine and deepen the reform of the financial regulatory system. Preventing and controlling risks is the eternal theme of Chinese-path modernization finance. Financial security is an important component of national security. Only by ensuring financial security can national economic security be ensured, thereby ensuring the steady advancement of Chinese-path modernization. The essence of ensuring financial security is to properly handle the dialectical relationship among credit, leverage, and risk. While enhancing the effectiveness of financial services in promoting the development of the real economy, it is necessary to strengthen financial regulation, improve the financial rule-of-law system, and effectively prevent and resolve various types of financial risks. On the one hand, on the basis of adhering to central authority and supplementing local financial regulation, refine the central-local financial regulatory coordination mechanism, focusing on solving problems such as cumbersome procedures for central-local financial regulatory information sharing, diverse statistical calibers, narrow scope of application and sharing, and poor comprehensive utilization of information. On the other hand, deepen innovation in the regulatory system for complex areas such as new financial business forms and cross-border finance. By establishing a penetrating regulatory mechanism and a regulatory mechanism for prevention beforehand, response during the event, and control afterward, achieve a reasonable balance between effective supervision of financial business and diversified innovation, and coordinate to solve the problems of cross-border financial open development and coordinated regulation.

细化、深化金融监管体制改革。防控风险是中国式现代化金融的永恒主题。金融安全是国家安全的重要组成部分，只有确保金融安全，才能确保国家经济安全，进而确保中国式现代化的稳步推进。保障金融安全的本质是处理好信用、杠杆与风险三者之间的辩证关系，在提升金融服务实体经济发展成效的同时，加强金融监管，完善金融法治体系，有效防范化解各类金融风险。一方面，在坚持中央事权和地方金融监管补充的基础上，细化央地金融监管协调机制，重点解决央地金融监管信息共享程序烦琐、统计口径多样、应用和共享范围较窄、信息综合运用效果不佳等问题。另一方面，深化金融新业态和跨境金融等复杂领域的监管体制创新，通过建立穿透式监管和事前防范、事中应对、事后控制监管机制，做好金融业务有效监管与多元创新之间的合理平衡，协调解决跨境金融开放发展和协调监管问题。

Optimize the supply system for financial services to the real economy. Serving the real economy is the fundamental purpose of constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system, and it is the basic function and main task of the Chinese-path modernization financial system. Starting from the period of the revolutionary war, Chinese finance has always revolved around the Party’s central work and has been closely linked with infrastructure construction, the industrial sector system, and the people’s livelihood economy. With the advancement of Chinese-path modernization, financial development should focus on improving the quality and efficiency of financial services to the real economy, helping the real economy achieve high-quality development. Clarify the boundary between the government and the market in the financial field, and promote the transformation of financial resource allocation towards government guidance and market determination. By optimizing the credit structure, financing structure, and innovating and optimizing various financial products and financial services, allocate more financial resources preferentially to key areas and critical links such as infrastructure construction, high-tech industries, strategic emerging industries, and rural revitalization, providing higher-quality financial services for the development of the real economy.

优化金融服务实体经济的供给体系。服务实体经济是构建中国式现代化金融体系的根本宗旨，是中国式现代化金融体系的基本功能和主要任务。从革命战争时期开始，中国金融就始终围绕党的中心工作，与基础设施建设、工业部门体系、民生经济等紧密相连。随着中国式现代化的推进，金融发展要重点提升金融服务实体经济的质量和效益，助力实体经济高质量发展。厘清政府与市场在金融领域的边界，推动金融资源配置向政府引导和市场决定转变。通过优化信贷结构、融资结构、创新优化各类金融产品和金融服务，将更多金融资源优先配置于基础设施建设、高新技术产业、战略性新兴产业、乡村振兴等重点领域和关键环节，为实体经济发展提供更高质量的金融服务。

Strive to build a modern financial institution and market system. Modern financial activities must follow the operational rules of the market economy. Chinese-path modernization finance must not only organically combine market dynamics with policy guidance but also fully leverage the promotional role of market mechanisms in financial resource allocation and financial innovation, thereby stimulating financial innovation vitality and improving financial operational efficiency on the basis of ensuring the healthy and stable development of finance. First, deepen the structural reform of financial institutions, accelerate support for the development of non-bank financial institutions such as securities, insurance, and funds, and gradually form a financial institution system with complete categories, full competition, and comprehensive functions. At the same time, build a banking system with commercial banks as the main body, change the long-standing situation where the vast majority of China’s bank credit is directed towards the state-owned economy, in order to achieve a rational allocation of financial resources. Second, accelerate the optimization of the financial market system and mechanism, focusing on aspects such as market size, market business environment, market trading mechanisms, and market operational mechanisms, with a focus on advancing the construction of market mechanisms such as bond underwriting and investor suitability, and accelerate the construction of a high-standard financial market system.

着力打造现代金融机构和市场体系。现代金融活动需遵循市场经济的运行规则。中国式现代化金融既要将市场动态与政策指导有机结合，也要充分发挥市场机制在金融资源配置和金融创新中的促进作用，从而在确保金融健康稳定发展的基础上，激发金融创新活力和提高金融运行效率。一是深化金融机构结构性改革，加快支持证券、保险、基金等非银行金融机构的发展，逐步形成种类齐全、竞争充分、功能全面的金融机构体系。同时，打造以商业银行为主体的银行体系，改变长期以来中国的银行信贷绝大部分都投向国有经济的现状，以实现金融资源合理配置。二是围绕市场规模、市场营商环境、市场交易机制、市场运行机制等方面，加快优化金融市场体制机制，重点推进债券承销、投资者合格性等市场机制建设，加快构建高标准金融市场体系。

Build a financial opening-up system centered on institutional opening up. Promoting high-level financial opening up is an inevitable trend in constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system. Adhering to opening up to the outside world is China’s basic national policy. “Promoting reform through opening up, promoting development through opening up” is a summary of the experience gained from China’s major achievements in modernization construction and is also an important reason for China’s rapid financial development. On the journey of building Chinese-path modernization, financial opening up must not only promote factor-based opening up centered on capital and commodities but also promote institutional opening up centered on rules and standards. Implement the spirit of the report to the 20th National Congress of the CPC [2]2 The 20th National Congress of the CPC was held in October 2022, at which Xi Jinping delivered a report outlining which proposed “steadily expanding institutional opening up in terms of rules, regulations, management, and standards,” strengthen alignment with the international financial system, and promote high-level institutional opening up in finance. At the same time, using the internationalization of the renminbi as a lever, establish a trinity of policy-based finance, development finance, and commercial finance with the renminbi as the currency for settlement, payment, exchange, and value distribution, forming a Sino-foreign cooperative financial system, enhance the influence, guiding power, and control of the renminbi in the international financial field, thereby gradually promoting the two-way opening up of domestic and foreign financial institutions and financial capital accounts.

构建以制度型开放为主的金融开放体系。推进金融高水平开放是构建中国式现代化金融体系的必然趋势。坚持对外开放是我国基本国策，“以开放促改革、以开放促发展”是我国现代化建设取得重大成就的经验总结，也是我国金融快速发展的重要原因。在建设中国式现代化的征程中，金融开放不仅要推动资金、商品等为主的要素型开放，更要推动以规则、标准等为主的制度型开放。贯彻党的二十大报告提出的“稳步扩大规则、规制、管理、标准等制度型开放”精神，加强与国际金融制度衔接，推进金融高水平制度型开放。同时，以人民币国际化为抓手，建立以人民币为结算、支付、汇兑、价值分配货币的政策性金融、开发性金融、商业性金融三位一体的中外合作金融体系，增强人民币在国际金融领域的影响力、引导力和控制力，从而逐步推动境内外金融机构、金融资本账户等的双向开放。

Build a high-level inclusive financial system. Being people-centered is the value orientation of Chinese-path modernization finance. Unlike Western modern finance, which takes self-augmentation and profit maximization as its fundamental goal, the people-oriented nature is the underlying character of the development of Chinese-characteristic finance. Chinese-path modernization finance must adhere to being people-centered. Building a high-level inclusive financial system requires us to take continuously meeting the people's growing needs for a better life and financial needs as the focus and end point, serving the people's needs, safeguarding the people's interests, and improving the people's well-being, thereby enhancing the people's sense of financial gain, happiness, and security. By fully leveraging the role of the "two hands" of the government and the market, we will continuously improve the coverage and accessibility of inclusive finance, with a focus on increasing inclusive financial services in key areas such as rural revitalization, elderly care, medical care, education, and other social welfare sectors, as well as green and low-carbon development. At the same time, we will use technological means such as the internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain to improve the quality and efficiency of inclusive financial services, create a healthy digital inclusive finance ecosystem, and better meet the people's growing demand for financial services.

构建高水平普惠金融体系。以人民为中心是中国式现代化金融的价值取向。与西方现代金融以追求自我增殖和利益最大化为根本目标不同，人民性是中国特色金融发展的底色。中国式现代化金融必须坚持以人民为中心，构建高水平普惠金融体系要求我们不断满足人民群众日益增长的美好生活需要和金融需求为着力点和落脚点，服务人民需要、维护人民利益、增进民生福祉，从而提高人民群众的金融获得感、幸福感和安全感。通过充分发挥政府与市场“两只手”的作用，持续提高普惠金融的覆盖率、可得性，重点加大乡村振兴、养老医疗教育等社会民生以及绿色低碳发展等重点领域的普惠金融服务，同时运用互联网、大数据、人工智能、区块链等科技手段，提高普惠金融服务质效，打造健康的数字普惠金融生态，更好满足人民群众日益增长的金融服务需求。

At present, as China has become a major financial country in the world, possessing the world's largest banking system, credit market, and foreign exchange reserves, as well as the world's second-largest stock market, bond market, and insurance market, constructing a Chinese-path modernization financial system is an inevitable trend in China's financial development.

当前，随着中国成为世界金融大国，拥有世界最大规模的银行体系、信贷市场、外汇储备以及世界第二大的股票市场、债券市场和保险市场，构建中国式现代化金融体系是中国金融发展的必然趋势。

(The author is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Shanghai Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era)

（作者系上海市习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想研究中心特聘研究员）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧