Previous | Back to Main | NextReformer Fang Xinghai has vaulted to China’s big leagues. Fang, 45, recently resigned as head of Shanghai’s Office of Financial Services to help direct the Communist Party’s Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs, in Beijing. In a 2011 interview with Institutional Investor, he called for a more decentralized Chinese financial system and said a fast-growing economy would make government-led reforms all but unnecessary. As China’s economy expanded by just 7.8 percent last year, the lowest rate since 1999, Fang will have plenty to do as an adviser to President Xi Jinping, with whom he worked during Xi’s brief stint as Shanghai party chief. Fang, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, is a former deputy CEO of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. “He will try to accelerate things, but he is going into a new position, a party position, so there will be a lot of assessing what is possible at first,” says Peter Alexander, founder of Shanghai-based financial consulting and research firm Z-Ben Advisors.
