Mao era The bank was established on by merger of three of several regional CCP-run financial entities, respectively the Huabei Bank (華北銀行, active in
North China), (in
Shandong), and (in
Northwestern China). The new bank was first headquartered at the former Huabei Bank head office in
Shijiazhuang, then moved to Beijing in 1949. All other mainland Chinese banks were either liquidated or nationalized in the early 1950s, so that between 1955 and 1978 the PBC was the only bank in the PRC's
single-tier banking system and was responsible for all
central banking and
commercial banking operations. All other banks within mainland China such as the
Bank of China were either organized as divisions of the PBC, or were non-deposit-taking agencies. During the
Cultural Revolution, the PBC suspended its commercial banking service. Local PBC branches were correspondingly merged into local government finance departments. In 1991, Vice Governor
Chen Yuan spearheaded the creation of the Electronic Interbank System (EIS), the PBC's first state-of-the-art
financial market infrastructure. In 1992, however, the PBC had to reluctantly concede the spinning off of its securities regulatory duties to the newly established
China Securities Regulatory Commission, whose first chair was former PBC vice governor
Liu Hongru. As part of the State Council's 1993 Resolution on Financial System Reform and its effort to modernize the financial sector, the PBC was assigned the role of managing the currency and preserving macroeconomic and financial stability. The bank's profile was greatly raised by the appointment of
Zhu Rongji as its governor in 1993, simultaneously as his role as
Vice Premier in charge of economic and financial affairs. Its central bank status was legally confirmed on March 18, 1995, by the 3rd Plenum of the
8th National People's Congress, and was granted a higher degree of autonomy than other State Council ministries by an act that year. In 1996 and 1996, the PBC established fundamental regulations on loans and consumer credit. In 1998, the PBC underwent a major restructuring. All provincial and local branches were abolished, and the PBC opened nine regional branches, whose boundaries did not correspond to local administrative boundaries. The nine branches were located in
Chengdu,
Guangzhou,
Jinan,
Nanjing,
Shanghai,
Shenyang,
Tianjin,
Wuhan, and
Xi'an, complemented by a sub-provincial network of city-level and county-level sub-branches. That same year, the so-called credit plan, a key feature of China's former state planning process, was finally abandoned, allowing the PBC to play a genuine role as monetary policy authority.
21st century In 2003, the
Standing Committee of the National People's Congress approved an amendment law for strengthening the role of PBC in the making and implementation of monetary policy for safeguarding the overall financial stability and provision of financial services. That year, the long overdue restructuring of China's banking sector made major progress with the creation of
Central Huijin Investment, a PBC-managed fund that allowed the PBC to take the lead from the
Ministry of Finance on the restructuring process and from the
CCP Central Organization Department on the appointment of senior bank executives. That same year, however, the PBC reluctantly lost its direct authority over banking supervision with the creation of the
China Banking Regulatory Commission. In 2005, the PBC elevated its branch in
Shanghai to the status of "second head office", in a move intended to mirror the prominent market-facing role of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York within the US
Federal Reserve System. In 2006, the PBC established the Credit Reference Centre to provide financial credit reporting. , China has swap agreements with 40 countries. These measures retroactively recognized the legal status of online third-party payment platforms like
Alipay. In 2019, this scheme was reorganized as a subsidiary of the PBC, the Deposit Insurance Fund Management Company. Meanwhile, in 2017, the PBC was tasked with the secretariat of China's newly established
Financial Stability and Development Committee chaired by Vice Premier
Liu He. In 2020, the PBC initiated supervision of significant
financial holding companies. The PBC underwent through another major restructuring in 2023 as part of the
plan on reforming Party and state institutions, with the abolition of the nine regional branches established in 1998, which had already seen their authority watered down by a change in 2004 that had returned authority to the PBC's branches at the provincial level and further changes in 2018. The new branches were inaugurated on August 18, 2023. The oversight over financial holding companies and financial consumer protection was also transferred from the PBC to the newly established
National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA). ==Operations==