PBOC’s Zhou Wants More Free Trade Clarity at G-20 Hamburg Summit

EghtesadOnline: People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said he would like to see Group of 20 officials continue to seek greater consensus on trade when national leaders meet this year.

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26 March 2017

“Hopefully I think at the G-20 summit in July in Hamburg that there may be more clear language on the free-trade system and globalization,” Zhou told a gathering of Asian leaders Saturday during a panel discussion at the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual conference on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. “We need to think about all of these things.”

The central banker for the world’s largest trading nation said the negatives of globalization are concentrated around employment issues and that retraining workers whose jobs are threatened should be a focus of globalization. He said there’s no going back on world trade, which has been the dominant theme of officials and executives at the annual gathering, Bloomberg reported.

“Globalization is something that has already happened,” said Zhou, the longest-serving central bank chief in the G-20. “You must directly face the new reality. It’s not whether you could choose to welcome globalization or not.”

Zhou’s work to defuse a soaring debt pile while keeping economic growth humming faces more complications from trade as U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist rhetoric complicates the policy outlook. The stakes are especially high this year with China’s leaders focused on ensuring stability before a twice-a-decade leadership transition in the fall.

Zhou, 69, is making his second public appearance in two weeks following a press conference after the close of the annual National People’s Congress. Zhou has led the PBOC for almost a decade and a half, helping steer the nation through the global financial crisis, overhaul its monetary policy tools and oversee the yuan’s elevation to reserve-currency status.