China unveils plan to set up a financial center in Chengdu-Chongqing area

China announced a new plan on Friday to build a financial center in the country's southwestern Chengdu-Chongqing area by 2025, as part of the country's larger drive to boost economic growth in the region.

The new plan, jointly released by the People's Bank of China, other departments and local governments, said the establishment of a western financial center in the region will step up the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle and inject new impetus to the high-quality development.

By 2025, the western financial center will be built with improved financial systems and mechanisms as well as enhanced vitality of financial institutions. After that, the financial opening-up will be further expanded significantly, and a new highland for fintech development will be established in the region.

By 2035, the region's role as a western financial center will be further boosted. A service system for inland financial opening up will be formed, which will support the regional industrial development and foster high-quality development in the country. And the financial center's influence on the world stage will be further increased.

The new plan requires studying and building data assets trades venues in the western region and exploring the upgrading of the existing relevant trading venues into intellectual property and technology transfer trading center of the integrated development of Chengdu-Chongqing area.

Under the new plan, China will support Chengdu to steadily conduct trials of digital RMB, carry out research on digital RMB, boost innovation mobile payment applications and expand the application scenarios of digital RMB.

The country will also support the construction of a national fintech certification center in Chongqing and explore the building of a regional fintech regulatory information platform.

According to the plan, it will expand trials of cross-border financial blockchain service platforms. And it will study more application scenarios on the blockchain service platforms, which will improve financial services for small and medium-sized enterprises and support the construction of new international land-sea trade corridor.

More efforts will also be made to study and establish the capital exchanges mechanism with Japan and Singapore and promote the application of fintech in fields such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and blockchain.

The new plan came after China issued detailed guideline in October to promote the coordinated development of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, as it aims to create a new economic growth zone in the western China region.

The new guideline, released by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, calls for building the Chengdu-Chongqing area into an important economic center, a hub for scientific and technological innovation, a new highland for reform and opening-up and a livable place for high-quality life of national influence.

Earlier in September, the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic regulator, unveiled a plan to promote the high-quality development of the new western land-sea corridor during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25).

The plan aims to build an economical, efficient, convenient, green, and safe land-sea corridor for the western region by 2025.

By then, the operation of the three major routes connecting Chengdu in Sichuan province, the Chongqing municipality, and Beibu Gulf port in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region will become more efficient with better transportation capacity and logistics services, playing a key role in driving the economic and industrial development along the routes.