A view of Shanghai Photo: VCG

The People's Bank of China (PBC), the central bank, and other seven government departments co-issued a document on Monday on setting up five financial experimental zones for technological innovation in Shanghai and four nearby cities in the Yangtze River Delta region.

According to the document published on the official website of the PBC, the four other cities include Nanjing city in East China's Jiangsu Province, Hangzhou and Jiaxing cities in East China's Zhejiang Province, and Hefei city in East China's Anhui Province.

The document outlined plans to further upgrade the experimental zones covering the five selected cities into an advanced demonstration areas for assisting tech innovation, policy reforms and industrial fusion within the next five years, which will also appeal for coordination from both government side and market side.  

The central bank also mentioned the need to encourage application of the latest technologies in the financial sector including block-chain and 5G in accelerating tech innovation. Plans for IPOs of technology firms in the five zones will be supported. 

The document stresses the importance of preventing financial risks, and ramp up regulation benefiting intellectual property protection, so as to facilitate growth of the five specific zones in technology driven way. 

In recent years, China's financial reforms to aid environment-friendly green development, , and technology innovation have been implemented in many Chinese cities and regions. 

As of the end of June this year, the balance of banks' green loans stood at 1.1 trillion yuan in the zones, accounting for 11.7 percent of the zones' overall loan balance, 2.2 points over the national average rate.

Global Times