BEIJING: China will replace the head of its securities regulator, state media reported Saturday, as the country struggles to reassure global investors that it can effectively manage stock markets that have experienced massive turmoil.
Xiao Gang, who was in charge during last year's crash, will be "dismissed" from his post at the China Securities Regulatory Commission and replaced by Liu Shiyu, chairman of the Agricultural Bank of China, the official Xinhua news agency said.
As growth slows and stocks deflate, capital has flooded out of the country, leaving Beijing desperate to win back waning confidence in the once vaunted economic oversight that has made China the world's second-largest economy. Chinese stocks slumped 23pc in January, their poorest month since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008.
A series of moves intended to smooth dramatic swings in stock prices that began last June instead created panic, raising questions about Beijing's ability to manage a critical period of economic transition.
Xiao, 57, took over as chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission in March 2013. He spent most of his career in China's banking system, including the central bank and the state-owned Bank of China, one of the country's "Big Four", which he headed for 10 years before moving to the CSRC.
He was in charge of overseeing the market in mid-2015 when the benchmark Shanghai index plummeted by almost a third, wiping off trillions of dollars and jolting global markets.
The plunge was triggered when regulators changed the rules on traders' use of borrowed money, bursting a debt-fuelled bubble that had seen Shanghai's benchmark index surge 150 percent in the year to mid-June.
Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2016
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