Financial sector indispensable to high-quality development

As a tone-setting policy conference for the development of the financial sector, the two-day central financial work conference that concluded in Beijing on Tuesday has attracted extensive attention. The conference is the highest-level meeting in China's financial sector. The conference has usually been held every five years since 1997, when it was first held as national financial work conference.

The once-in-five-years conference is held in a different economic environment and background each time, though each conference focuses on deepening financial reform, controlling financial risks and promoting the financial sector to serve the economy.

This year's meeting focused on building China into a financial power, emphasizing that the financial sector is the lifeblood of a nation's economy and a crucial component of a country's core competitiveness. It is imperative to accelerate the building of China into a country with a strong financial sector, comprehensively strengthen financial regulation, improve the financial system, optimize financial services, and effectively forestall and defuse financial risks.

It also stressed that China will remain committed to the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics and boost the high-quality development of its financial sector. From an external perspective, the rise of global conservatism underlines the importance of national security. Internally, the financial market is fraught with complexity, weak internal risk controls and corruption in some areas. China's financial sector needs to be further strengthened to effectively promote breakthroughs in the real economy, especially in the high-tech industry. The financial sector also needs to be further regulated to make due contributions to economic stability and people's livelihood, so as to achieve a balance between security and development.

Building China into a country with a strong financial sector raises explicit requirements for the country's financial market and financial institutions. It points out not only the direction for the future development of China's financial sector, but also how its overall political and economic development should be combined with the financial sector.