On October 28, 2016, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee held a meeting. In the “Monetary Policy” section, the conference made no mention of “steady growth”, but only stressed that “we should focus on curbing asset bubbles and guarding against financial risks while ensuring reasonable and abundant liquidity”. According to China Banking Regulatory Commission Jiangsu Supervision Bureau, the NPL (non-performing loan) balance of banking financial institutions in Jiangsu Province reached RMB 125.5 billion by the end of June 2016, with an LPN ratio of 1.41%. In the first half of 2013, Jiangsu Province ranked first in new non-performing loans, reaching RMB 18.2 billion. In 2014, the Jiangsu Province Regulatory Authority disclosed that Jiangsu was home to four of the six industries with serious overcapacity, namely, coal, steel, cement, electrolytic aluminum, flat glass and ships, indicating that its credit structure needs adjusting. In view of the current situation, Professor Liu Zhibiao, Dean of Yangtze IDEI, proposed the topic for the online discussion: “How should we guard against financial risks through unswervingly deleveraging in the context of continued differentiation of economic trends”, and encouraged the experts and scholars to exchange their opinions on the topic.
