China's financial regulators will continue to fight illegal underground lending practices in 2017 to maintain international financial management order and national financial security.
The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) vowed to strengthen supervision on the foreign exchange market and crack down on illegal practices to maintain a more even international balance of payments in 2017, according to a report on its website on Monday.
Illegal underground lending remains rampant in China. In 2016, the country's public security agencies uncovered more than 380 cases of illegal underground lending involving 900 billion yuan ($130.86 billion), the Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.
Many criminals transfer domestic residents' illegal gains abroad through underground banks in collusion with people overseas, Shu Jianping, head of the anti-money laundering office of the economic crime investigation division of the Ministry of Public Security, was quoted as saying in a separate Xinhua report.
In some cases, criminals set up fake companies and then illegally transferred money from a corporate bank accounts to individual bank accounts, Shu said.
These illegal practices not only disrupt the country's financial management order and but also foster drug crimes, telecom frauds and corruption, Shu said.
The ministry plans to continue combating illegal underground lenders in cooperation with SAFE and the People's Bank of China, according to Xinhua.
Meanwhile, the country will also make its policies more transparent to advance the opening up of domestic financial markets, according to SAFE.
Pan Gongsheng, head of the SAFE, was quoted as saying in the report that the bureau will continue to promote the two-way opening up of financial markets and make cross-border trade and investment more convenient to better serve the real economy.
Currently, the domestic foreign exchange market is stable and cross-border capital flows are becoming more balanced, Pan noted.
