About Financial News

Financial News

Financial News, known in Chinese as Jinrong Shibao, is a state-run daily newspaper in China specialising in financial and economic reporting. It was established on 1 May 1987 as the official newspaper of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, and it remains published under the supervision of the People's Bank of China. The paper is sometimes rendered in English as Financial Times (China), a translation that should not be confused with the British Financial Times. Its position is unique in Chinese journalism: it is described as the only media authorised by the People's Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to publish financial statistics, and it has served as a designated information disclosure medium for China's banking, securities and insurance regulators. For readers of Chinese monetary and financial policy, it is one of the closest things the system has to an official journal of record.

Establishment in 1987 by the Central Bank and Eight Financial Institutions

Financial News was established in 1987 as the official newspaper of the People's Bank of China. It was jointly funded by eight financial institutions: the People's Bank of China itself, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the People's Insurance Company of China, the Bank of Communications and China CITIC Bank. Supervision rested with the People's Bank of China. That founding structure captured the shape of Chinese finance at the time: a central bank that had only recently been separated from everyday commercial banking, the large state banks that dominated lending, the national insurer and the newer joint-stock institutions, all combining to create a newspaper for the financial system as a whole. The paper began publication on 1 May 1987, giving China's rapidly reforming financial sector a specialist daily voice of its own.

The First Shareholding News Medium of the Reform Era

Reference accounts of the paper record a distinction that sets it apart in Chinese media history: Financial News was the first news medium established in China after reform and opening up using a shareholding system. Instead of being funded and run by a single government body in the traditional manner, it was created through joint investment by its eight founding financial institutions, an arrangement modelled on the shareholding experiments then spreading through Chinese enterprise reform. The point is more than technical. The late 1980s were a period in which China's financial institutions were themselves being reorganised along more commercial lines, and the newspaper they founded together embodied that change in its own ownership structure. A collectively owned financial newspaper, answerable to the central bank's supervision but funded by the system's major institutions, matched the transitional structure of Chinese finance between the old mono-bank era and the modern regulatory state.

The Inscription by Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping inscribed the name of the newspaper, a mark of recognition recorded in standard accounts of the paper's founding. As with several other leading Chinese economic newspapers of the period — including the Economic Information Daily and Economic Daily, which also received Deng's calligraphy for their mastheads — the inscription associated the young publication with the leadership of the reform programme its reporting existed to serve. For a newspaper founded only in 1987, the honour placed Jinrong Shibao in the company of much older national titles and signalled official approval of the experiment it represented: a specialist financial paper, owned jointly by the financial institutions themselves, reporting on the building of a modern financial system. The inscription remains one of the facts most consistently mentioned in profiles of the paper.

From Twice a Week to a Daily Newspaper

Financial News did not begin as a daily. It was initially published twice a week. It became a three-day publication in 1988, a four-day publication in 1989, a six-day publication in 1991, and finally a daily newspaper in 1992. That steady increase in frequency traces the growth of its subject. In 1987 China's financial system generated enough specialist news for two issues a week; within five years, with banking reform deepening, securities markets opening in Shanghai and Shenzhen at the start of the 1990s and monetary policy becoming a daily concern of economic life, the paper needed to appear every day. The progression — twice-weekly, three days, four days, six days, daily — is recorded in the paper's reference history and stands as a compact measure of how quickly Chinese finance expanded in the first reform decade, and of the paper's growth alongside the institutions that owned it.

Authorised Publisher of Financial Statistics

The paper's most distinctive function is statistical. Financial News is the only media authorised by the People's Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to publish financial statistics. In a system where official financial data carries exceptional weight — money supply, lending, foreign exchange and related figures that move markets and shape policy debate — the right to publish those statistics is a formal mark of trust, and it gives the newspaper a role beyond ordinary reporting. Its pages are one of the channels through which the central bank and the foreign-exchange administration place authoritative numbers before the public and the financial industry. This is the sense in which the paper operates as an official organ rather than merely a sympathetic one: it does not only comment on monetary authority, it carries part of that authority's published record.

A Designated Disclosure Medium for the Regulators

Alongside its statistical role, Financial News has been a key information disclosure medium designated by China's financial regulators — named in reference accounts as the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, the three sector regulators of the period in which that system operated. Designated disclosure status means regulated institutions could, and in some cases were required to, publish official information through the paper, making it part of the formal transparency machinery of Chinese finance. A newspaper holding designations across banking, securities and insurance occupied a rare cross-sector position: most Chinese financial papers are associated with one part of the system, such as the securities newspapers linked to the stock markets, whereas Financial News, by virtue of its central-bank foundation and joint ownership by banks and the national insurer, served the disclosure needs of the whole financial industry.

Coverage and Editorial Focus

The paper specialises in financial and economic reporting, and reference descriptions characterise it as an authoritative source of information on monetary policy, banking regulation and macroeconomic developments. Its natural subjects are the decisions of the People's Bank of China, the condition and regulation of the banking system, foreign exchange under the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and the wider economic conditions to which monetary policy responds. For professional readers — bankers, officials, analysts and the financial press itself — its value lies in proximity: as the central bank's own newspaper, its reporting and commentary are read for signals about official thinking that may not be stated in formal policy documents. International financial media treat it on exactly that basis, citing Financial News when they need to show how an issue is being discussed inside China's monetary establishment rather than merely announced by it.

A Voice in Public Policy Debate: The 2018 Episode

The paper's role as a channel for central-bank thinking was displayed vividly in July 2018, in an episode reported internationally by Caixin Global. Financial News published an article headlined, in translation, "Monetary Policy Alone Can Hardly Cope With Credit Contraction, Fiscal and Regulation Policy Support Urgently Needed," quoting analysts who argued that liquidity had remained tight despite repeated monetary loosening by the central bank that year, and that fiscal policy needed to do more. Caixin described the piece as ratcheting up a rare public debate between policymakers, following public criticism of fiscal policy by the central bank's chief researcher, and noted that a finance ministry official publicly refuted the arguments days later. The report was quickly taken down from the newspaper's website. The episode is one of the best-documented moments in the paper's history precisely because it showed the function such a newspaper performs: arguments surface in its pages that cannot easily be made in official statements, and their appearance — and removal — is itself news about the state of policy debate in Beijing.

Digital Presence and Continuing Role

Financial News maintains a website on which its reporting appears, as the 2018 episode itself demonstrated when the contested article was published online and then removed. Like other Chinese national newspapers, the paper now works across print and digital channels, but its identity remains anchored in the printed daily and in its formal functions: authorised publisher of financial statistics for the central bank and the foreign-exchange administration, and a designated disclosure medium for the financial regulators. Those functions do not depend on circulation in the way a commercial newspaper's influence does. They rest on the paper's founding settlement of 1987 — created by the People's Bank of China and the country's leading financial institutions, supervised by the central bank — which has kept Jinrong Shibao at the centre of how China's financial system communicates with itself and with the public.

Significance and Legacy

Financial News matters to the history of Chinese media for three reasons, all grounded in its record. First, its founding on 1 May 1987 as the official newspaper of the People's Bank of China gave the reform-era financial system a specialist paper of its own at the moment that system was being built. Second, its joint funding by eight financial institutions made it, on reference accounts, the first news medium in reform-era China established through a shareholding system — a small but genuine first in the organisation of Chinese journalism. Third, its authorised role in publishing financial statistics and its designated disclosure status made it part of the operating machinery of Chinese finance rather than an observer of it. Read together, those facts explain why a newspaper little known to the general public is treated by bankers, regulators and international financial media as a source of record, and why its pages remain one of the places where the intentions of China's monetary authorities can most reliably be studied.