A year after the Shanghai free-trade zone was launched as an enclave of financial deregulation, the disappointment is palpable, with scant progress on loosening capital controls or liberalising interest rates.
“We see the FTZ focused mainly on the flow of goods in and out. When it comes to capital flows, even though they’ve put out a lot of rules and regulations, we don’t see much substantive progress,” says Peng Zhenwei, economist at CEBM Group, a Shanghai-based research firm serving institutional investors.
Economists say further relaxation of rules on merchandise trade is hardly among the most urgent reforms for China, already the world’s largest exporter and second-largest importer.