The vice-president and deputy chief investment officer of China Investment Corporation (CIC) – the nation’s sovereign wealth fund – is expected to join the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong from next week, according to the South China Morning Post.
Qi Bin, 57, would likely be in the role of deputy director. The liaison office currently has four deputy directors, one of whom told the Post that Qi was expected to take the lead in coordinating economic and financial policies between the mainland and the SAR.
Another unnamed source told the Post that, in Qi, Beijing was sending “one of its brightest financial minds, with extensive financial regulatory experience and comprehensive understanding of the global financial market, to Hong Kong.”
[See more: China’s wealthy turn to Hong Kong instead of Singapore as a financial haven]
They said that the move showed the central government’s “strong commitment to strengthen Hong Kong’s role as an international financial centre.”
According to Qi’s alma mater, Tsinghua University, the senior state banker joined CIC in 2016, having spent 16 years at China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), where, as director general its International Cooperation Department, he implemented a number of milestone policies integrating China’s capital markets with the world.
Qi holds a PhD in econometrics from Beijing’s Tsinghua University; an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, in the US; and a master’s degree in biophysics from the University of Rochester, also in the US. Prior to returning to China, he worked in the US with a number of Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs.
