About China Finance 40 Forum

China Finance 40 Forum

The China Finance 40 Forum (CF40, Chinese: 中国金融四十人论坛) is a non-government, non-profit professional think tank in Beijing specialising in economic and financial policy. Created on 12 April 2008 as a club of 40 finance experts around 40 years of age — hence its name — it unites senior officials, regulators, bankers and academics for research, closed-door seminars and public debate about China's financial system. It should not be confused with China Finance, the magazine and publishing name associated with the People's Bank of China system: CF40 is an independent forum and research organisation, not a periodical.

Since 2008 CF40 has grown from a small expert club into one of China's most influential independent financial think tanks. It publishes macroeconomic quarterly reports and policy briefs, created finance institutes in Shanghai and Tianjin, established a dedicated CF40 Institute in 2021, launched an English-language research service in 2024, and since 2019 has convened the annual Bund Summit in Shanghai — the event at which Jack Ma delivered his famous 2020 speech on financial regulation. On Think Tanks describes it as China's most influential independent financial think tank, hosting over 100 high-level events annually and partnering with global institutions such as the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Brookings.

Founding in 2008

CF40 was created on 12 April 2008. It was founded and developed by Wang Haiming, previously a journalist and chief editor at the 21st Century Business Herald, one of China's leading business newspapers. The founding concept was deliberately small and senior: a club of 40 finance experts, around 40 years of age, drawn from across the financial system. Chen Yuan, a former vice governor of the People's Bank of China and vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, served as founding chairman. Wang Haiming later became the forum's president.

The timing mattered. CF40 was founded months before the global financial crisis of 2008 transformed debates about financial regulation, risk and the role of the state in finance. A standing forum in which Chinese regulators, bankers and academics could think through such questions together — outside the hierarchy of any single institution — filled a gap in China's policy landscape, and the forum built its model around that convening power.

Membership and working method

CF40's members and participants are senior figures from Chinese financial institutions, banks, securities companies, insurance companies and fund management companies, together with academics and media figures. Its characteristic working method is the closed-door seminar: small, high-level, off-the-record discussions in which officials, market practitioners and researchers can test arguments about monetary policy, financial regulation, capital markets and macroeconomic management before positions harden in public.

Alongside those private discussions, the forum works in public through research and publication. It aims to promote research, exchange and policy recommendations in the Chinese financial sector to advance the development and reform of China's financial system, and its members' research covers financial market development, financial regulation, financial innovation, monetary policy and capital market reform. The combination — private candour plus public research — is the forum's defining institutional design.

Research and publications

CF40 publishes macroeconomic quarterly reports and policy briefs. Its quarterly reporting has been led by senior fellows such as Zhang Bin, a CF40 senior fellow and deputy director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, whose quarterly analysis identified challenges including pandemic-induced uncertainties, the simultaneous weakening of consumption, real estate and exports, the widening gap between local government fiscal revenue and expenditure, the possibility of new risk events and escalating global geopolitical conflicts.

A later quarterly report, "China's Countercyclical Fiscal Policy and Sustainability of Government Debt", argued that China had never heavily relied on budgetary spending to provide counter-cyclical stimulus, relying instead mainly on a model in which local governments, financial institutions and local government financing vehicles worked together to boost investment. CF40's research department has also advised that China could consider implementing a negative individual income tax to boost consumption and employment. Its annual Jingshan Report series reached its third volume in 2019, focusing on how and what kind of financial innovation could better serve the high-quality development of the economy and putting forward eight policy recommendations. Academic committee chairman Huang Yiping has publicly stressed that China should continue to press ahead with market-oriented financial reform — a characteristic CF40 position.

Institutes in Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing

As the forum grew, it built permanent research arms. In 2011 it created the Shanghai Finance Institute in Shanghai, giving the forum a base in China's financial capital. In 2016 it established the Northern Finance Institute in Tianjin. In 2021 it established the CF40 Institute to strengthen its research capacity, professionalising the production of the reports and briefs that had previously depended more directly on members' individual work.

In 2024 the forum launched the English-language CF40 Research service, taking its macroeconomic and financial policy research to an international readership. The service publishes CF40 analysis in English for global policymakers, investors and researchers following Chinese financial policy — a recognition that the audience for the forum's work now extends well beyond China's own financial system.

The Bund Summit

Since 2019 CF40 has convened the annual Bund Summit in Shanghai, named after the Bund, Shanghai's historic financial waterfront. The summit is the forum's flagship public event, bringing together policymakers, financial executives and academics from China and abroad. The first summit, in October 2019, was co-sponsored by CF40 and the Huangpu District Government of Shanghai and focused on continuing the opening-up of the financial industry and speeding up the construction of Shanghai as an international financial centre, with discussion of financial opening, fintech and wealth management.

The 2020 Bund Summit entered financial history as the venue for Jack Ma's speech on financial regulation in China, which has been widely associated with the suspension of Ant Group's initial public offering shortly afterwards. The episode demonstrated the summit's unusual position: a think-tank event whose podium had become a place where the future direction of Chinese finance was genuinely contested. Later summits kept the international profile. The sixth Bund Summit, held in Shanghai from 5 to 7 September 2024 under the theme "Navigating a Changing World", was jointly organised by CF40 and the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, presented speakers representing 20 countries and regions, and assembled former central bank governors including Jean-Claude Trichet, Donald Kohn, Masaaki Shirakawa and Jacob Frenkel.

International partnerships

CF40 partners with international institutions including the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and the Brookings Institution, facilitating international dialogue on China's economic and financial landscape. Those partnerships are visible in the architecture of its flagship event: the 2026 Bund Summit programme included a Bund Roundtable and closed-door meeting co-hosted by CF40 and the Group of Thirty, a joint CF40-IMF discussion on "The Future of the Asian Economy", the CF40-PIIE-Bruegel China-US-Europe Economists Symposium, and a CF40-Euro50 closed-door luncheon on changes in the international monetary landscape.

The 2026 Bund Summit, jointly hosted by CF40 and Tsinghua University in Shanghai's Huangpu District from 19 to 22 October 2026 under the theme "Technology, Geopolitics and the Global Economy", featured 19 Bund Roundtables and 12 closed-door meetings, with a series of Track II exchanges extending the programme across seven days. Organisers noted that the summit had by then been held seven times, that each year around 130 speakers take part with more than half joining from outside China, and that representatives from 44 countries will have attended across its history. Its flagship releases included the CF40 Research Annual Report, analysing the structural drivers behind the shift in China's growth model.

Leadership and figures

The forum's leadership reflects its founding design. Chen Yuan, its founding chairman, brought the authority of a former central bank vice governor and CPPCC vice chairman. Wang Haiming, who founded and developed the organisation from his background as a journalist and chief editor at 21st Century Business Herald, serves as president and remains its most visible organiser, photographed addressing the Bund Summit in 2025. Around them, the forum's academic and executive roles have been filled by senior economists and financial figures — Huang Yiping as academic committee chairman among them — while its senior fellows, such as Zhang Bin, lead its published research.

Place among Chinese think tanks

CF40 occupies a distinctive place in China's think-tank system. It is not a ministry institute like the foreign ministry's China Institute of International Studies, not a State Council body like the Development Research Center, and not a university centre. It is a non-government, non-profit, professional membership forum whose influence comes from the seniority of the people in the room and the quality of the research it publishes. Directories describe it as China's most influential independent financial think tank, hosting over 100 high-level events annually — an output that, combined with the Bund Summit and its institutes in three cities, makes it the closest Chinese analogue to the great convening institutions of international finance.

Access and official channels

CF40 is based in Beijing, with its Shanghai Finance Institute in Shanghai and Northern Finance Institute in Tianjin. Its English-language research is published through the CF40 Research service launched in 2024, including its Substack channel, and the Bund Summit maintains its own event presence for agendas and programmes. No official website was recorded for the forum in the source listing for this profile, so readers are directed to the CF40 Research service and Bund Summit channels for current publications and events. For readers of this directory, the China Finance 40 Forum is recorded as a Beijing, China non-governmental think tank founded on 12 April 2008, specialising in economic and financial policy research.