Yi Gang, a former deputy governor of the People''s Bank of China, or the central bank, was appointed as the new head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchanges (SAFE), according to a statement on the SAFE''s website on July 17th 2009.
Hu Xiaolian, SAFE''s former head became a deputy governor of the central bank, said the bank''s website.
Yi Gang, born in 1958, was an academic economist, Professor and Ph.D advisor at China Center for Economic Research, Beijing University. He rose to prominence for his early warning about the threat of deflation in 1998. His warning played an important role on the diversion of China's economic macro control policy at that time. Then he was brought into the policy making team to formulate the monetary policy. He has been the Director-General of Monetary Policy Department of People's Bank of China (PBC). In 2007, he was appointed as Deputy Governor of PBC.
His book, China's monetary process (the Chinese title is 中国的货币化进程), explains how China can enjoy so many years of double-digit expansion of money supply without massive inflation.
As China''s foreign exchange reserves, the world's biggest, rose to a historical new high of two trillion US dollars in June 2009, the management team of SAFE will face a bigger challenge. Yi's first task will be getting to grips with the flows of hot money that accounted for the substantial increase.
