Word: shang
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...only local punters whose money is riding on Shang's efforts. Thanks to China's commitments to the World Trade Organization, its stock market is slowly opening up to foreigners too. Overseas firms won permission in November to start forming joint-venture fund management companies, and others will begin underwriting Chinese companies listed on the country's two bourses, in Shanghai and Shenzhen. These foreigners will be looking to the CSRC's new chief to protect their investments before ponying up their highly desired capital...
...Shang up to the task? Some observers are skeptical, given that he has no public record as a reformer with a commitment to greater openness. "We're worried he's simply a technocrat and not an advocate," says a senior executive at a multinational investment bank, "and that could affect the progress of reforms...
...Shang, 51, spent the bulk of his career as a bureaucrat at China's central bank, the People's Bank of China. His star rose there in 1994, a troubled time when inflation hit 24% and the economy was hobbled by a myriad of off-the-book loans between corporations. Zhu Rongji, then China's Vice Premier, was determined to untangle the mess. In meetings on the issue, "Shang impressed Zhu with his ability to cite numbers off the top of his head," recalls one of Shang's former bank colleagues. In addition, Shang is "likable and gives...
...Shang's predecessor, Zhou Xiaochuan, was a committed reformer who took over the CSRC in 2000 and tried to give it teeth. (Last week he was rewarded with a promotion to lead the central bank). Nonetheless, investors have been duped in the past couple of years by a string of spectacular stock-market scandals. Consider Lu Liang, for example, who took control of a listed chicken breeder in 1999 and renamed it China Venture Capital. After raising an astounding $650 million from investors, he used 125 brokerage offices to manipulate his firm's shares. Under a pseudonym, he even wrote...
...measure of Shang's success will be his ability to list more private companies, reversing this tradition of governmental favoritism. Likewise, Shang must also allow listed state companies to sell more of their shares to the public, giving regular investors greater influence over how those companies are run. However, making these changes happen will require political clout, says Joe Studwell, editor of the China Economic Quarterly, "and it seems Shang just doesn't have...