CHINA

People’s Bank to Adopt Market Controls: China’s central bank will start using Western-style market mechanisms to stabilize currency markets and control the money supply, a senior official said last week. People’s Bank of China vice-governor Chen Yuan told a Beijing conference that the central bank essentially would abandon the crude controls of four decades of central planning. “The central bank will increasingly utilize loans, deposit requirements, interest rates, exchange rates, open-market operations and other measures to effect a gradual shift from direct to indirect control,” Chen said. He promised major reforms that in effect would transform the People’s Bank into a Western-style central bank and spawn an independent, decentralized banking sector.