The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), China’s central bank, has released a draft for comments on regulations aimed at strengthening anti-monopoly supervision of payment services by non-bank institutions.
The draft defines the scope of the relevant market and the criteria for determining market dominance, in a bid to maintain the fair order of market competition.
If a non-bank payment institution meets certain conditions in terms of market share, the PBoC can provide early warnings of a range of measures, including regulatory interviews, according to the draft. It can also call for agencies to review whether the institutions have a dominant market position.
If non-bank payment institutions fail to follow the principles of safety, efficiency, honesty and fair competition, and the healthy development of the payment service market is seriously affected, the PBoC can suggest that the State Council’s anti-monopoly law-enforcement agencies stop market dominance abuse and centralization by splitting the institutions based on payment business types.
The draft also requires payment institutions to deposit their reserves in the PBoC or qualified commercial banks and specify the corresponding prudent oversight measures to protect the users’ rights and interests.
Beijing Financial Court
China is looking into establishing the Beijing Financial Court in a bid to improve the country’s judicial system for finance-related cases and ensure sound law environment for relevant sectors.
A draft decision on the establishment of the court was submitted on Wednesday to an ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.
According to the draft, the court would have jurisdiction commensurate with an intermediate people’s court in hearing finance-related civil, commercial and administrative lawsuits in Beijing.
It would also deal with cases involving financial market infrastructure, as well as appellate trials of finance-related cases first heard by grassroots-level courts in the city.
Satellite production
As China ramps up efforts to develop its aerospace industry, the country’s first intelligent mass production line for satellites began trial operations recently, with a capacity to produce more than 240 small satellites each year.
“We spent 429 days completing the first intelligent production line for mass production of satellites in our country, which is able to realize the design capacity of producing more than 240 small satellites each year,” said Zou Guangbao, the general manager at a subsidiary of space engineering under China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation 2nd Academy.
From single piece, small scale manual production to automated production, now more than 10 core processes are undertaken by machines, which has increased the production efficiency by more than 40%.
Company news
Suez, one of the world’s leading water and waste management services companies, plans to further expand its presence in China in the environmental services sector, including plastic recycling, water and waste management services.
China will remain a magnet for foreign investment this year, and the company’s main business will aid the country’s transition to a low-carbon economy, demonstrating its commitment to developing a long-term strategic partnership with China, said Steve Clark, chief executive of Suez Asia.
The company recently acquired a non-controlling stake in NWS Holdings Ltd to enhance its scale and presence in China, a key growth market that has been a strategic priority for many years.
The stories were compiled by Nadeem Xu and KoKo and first published at ATimesCN.com.