London, 22/9/11:
Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, is today announced as Euromoney’s Central Bank Governor of the Year 2011.
Governor Zhou will be presented with his award at a reception in Washington on Sunday, September 25, during the annual World Bank/IMF meetings.
Zhou receives his award in recognition of his handling of the Chinese economy and his efforts to open up China to greater international trade and investment.
Following the stimulus put in place in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Zhou has been successful in steering a steady course between the conflicting tensions of maintaining China’s economic growth and controlling inflation. The stimulus package boosted China’s growth, but Zhou was swift to switch to a tightening interest rate policy once inflationary pressures took hold. So far, he has been successful in avoiding macro-economic policies that would trigger a hard landing.
He has been forthright in both his words and his actions in managing China’s $3 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, notably through sterilization operations designed to absorb the base money supplied through reserve build-up.
Zhou has also taken important steps to open up China’s currency markets. Most notable among these is the development of an offshore renminbi debt market, which many bankers in Asia think will one day be among the world’s largest fixed income sectors. The opening up of the RMB market is also helping to facilitate trade and investment, reduce currency mismatches and lower exchange rate risks.
Zhou has also become increasingly influential on the global stage, using China’s position as among the biggest investors in government bonds in the US and the EU to call on developed countries to work closely together to manage the sovereign debt crisis.
Indeed, over his tenure since 2002, Governor Zhou has become one of the most important central bank governors in the world, while giving a new level of credibility to the role through his timely and appropriate responses.
Governor Zhou joins a long list of leading central bank governors to receive this accolade from Euromoney over the past 30 years. Most recent among them are Jean-Claude Trichet of the ECB in 2008, Durmus Yilmaz of Turkey in 2009 and Stanley Fischer of Israel in 2010.
An in-depth interview with Governor Zhou, reviewing his tenure as governor of the PBC and the challenges he has faced in recent years, plus his views of the development of China’s role in the global economy and of the current global economic situation, is published today at http://www.euromoney.com/zhou and is free to read.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
For more information about Euromoney, go to euromoney.com/about
For more information about the Central Bank Governor of the Year award, contact Euromoney’s editor Clive Horwood at chorwood@euromoney.com
For more information about Euromoney’s reception at the World Bank/IMF meetings, please email imf@euromoneyplc.com