- The Financial Times – Capital controls the talk of China parliamentarians
“The biggest bottleneck enterprises encounter is the strict controls on foreign exchange,” Fu Jun, chairman of conglomerate Macrolink, told state media. “After a difficult negotiation to win a high-quality investment project, enterprises are unable to pay due to foreign exchange control payments and ultimately lose out on opportunities for international mergers and acquisitions.” Zhang Yichen, head of one of China’s largest investment groups, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that “it’s a lie” to claim, as many government officials had done, that capital controls had not had any impact on legitimate overseas investments. “It’s not too surprising that the premier’s report to the National People’s Congress would skip this topic,” says Chen Zhiwu, director of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong, “given that the overall theme of national policy in China is to remain open to the outside world. There would be a lot of self-contradiction.”