The Last Battles of China's Financial Reform

China’s financial reform began the moment its leaders decided to shift their policy focus from class struggle to economic development in December 1978. In 1998, Nick Lardy of the Brookings Institution published a book titled China’s Unfinished Economic Revolution, in which he discussed changes in the financial sector during the reform period and outlined some necessary additional steps (Lardy 1998). More than 15 years later, the ‘revolution’ remains unfinished. Financial liberalisation is an important component of the comprehensive reform program approved by the Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress in November 2013.