China lawmaker calls for coordinated financial regulation

BEIJING -- A Chinese lawmaker on Thursday called for coordinated financial regulation headed by the central bank to contain systemic risk in an industry fraught with cross-sector financing products.

The current mechanism of separate supervision by different financial organs will naturally lead to poor understanding of risk, Gu Shengzu, a member of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, said at a press conference.

"The biggest economic risk China faces today is in the financial sector," he stressed, singling out China's turbulent stock market as a lesson to be learned for the regulatory mechanism.

Currently, China's banking, securities and insurance industries are under separate regulators. As the financial market evolves, the boundaries of some financial services become blurred, leading to both overlapping regulation and supervision vacuum.

Gu suggested China move from segmented supervision to unified, led by the central bank, with greater emphasis on cross-sectoral regulation.

"The key task is to avoid risks crossing and spreading," he added.