Regulation of Financial Conglomerates in China: From De Facto to De Jure

Abstract

Financial operations and the regulation thereof have undergone drastic changes in China in the past few decades. Among these changes, the emergence and development of various financial conglomerates are quite noteworthy. At present, such financial conglomerates mainly exist in a de facto sense, due to the lack of corresponding specific laws and regulations. The regulatory structure is also immature in this respect. In particular, no meaningful coordination mechanism exists among different sectoral regulatory authorities, and the division of supervisory responsibilities in relation to financial conglomerates remains to be clarified. Different factors taken into account, it is submitted that a single mega-regulator is not desirable for the time being, while an effective coordination mechanism based on separated, functional regulation, with the central bank as the leading coordinator, is a more realistic and potentially better choice for China.