The shift comes after Chinese authorities struggled to halt a selloff in the world’s second-largest stock market with piecemeal support measures over the past few months. About US$5 trillion of market value had been wiped out from onshore equities from their peak in 2021, adding urgency for policymakers to do more as the country enters the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.
China replaced the head of its securities regulator, a surprise move that may foreshadow more forceful measures by Xi Jinping’s government to end the rout in the country’s US$8 trillion ($10.75 trillion) stock market.
Wu Qing, a banking and regulation veteran who earned the reputation as “the broker butcher” when he led a crackdown on traders in the mid-2000s, is replacing Yi Huiman as chairman and party chief of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
