A booth at the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services highlights the sci-tech finance initiatives of Beijing's Haidian district.

A bellwether for financial policymaking, a platform for international exchanges and an incubator of ideas, the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2026 kicked off on Monday and runs through Thursday.

As part of the event, the People's Bank of China will host its flagship forum on Tuesday, centered on artificial intelligence and banking functions, and aligned with the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) and emerging trends in the global economy and finance.

AI is advancing at a rapid pace and carries far-reaching implications for macroeconomics and the financial sector, making it a shared priority for central banks across the world.

The PBC forum will bring together senior officials and experts from domestic and international financial authorities, international organizations and financial institutions. They will share insights on relevant issues and exchange views on policy responses and international financial governance cooperation.

The PBC also plans to showcase its measures to support the development of the Beijing (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) International Center for Science and Technology Innovation.

The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference expanded the scope of the international sci-tech innovation center from core cities to the broader Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, shifting the model from stand-alone urban development toward coordinated innovation across city clusters.

Li Kexin, spokesperson for the PBC and deputy director of its general office, said that the bank is advancing support for the innovation center along three pillars: sci-tech innovation, coordinated regional development, and financial reform.

To back sci-tech innovation, the bank has mobilized both governmental and market-based levers via monetary policy tools and credit support, maximizing these instruments' dual function of aggregate adjustment and structural guidance.

In 2024, it launched relending for sci-tech innovation and technological upgrading to channel financial resources into technological innovation, supporting self-reliance in science and technology.

This year, the PBC optimized the policy. It lowered the relending interest rate, increased the quota, and included private small and medium-sized enterprises with relatively high research and development spending within the support scope. The aim is to encourage financial institutions to scale up credit supply for priority areas.

By the end of August, outstanding sci-tech loans rose 12.3 percent year-on-year, outpacing overall loan growth, while lending to sci-tech SMEs maintained an annual expansion of roughly 20 percent for three consecutive years.

On the bond financing front, the PBC has stepped up support for sci-tech enterprises and equity investment institutions to issue sci-tech innovation bonds, which operate in tandem with the relending facility.

Rolled out in May 2025, the policy has yielded positive outcomes. Building on this, the PBC refined the framework by integrating the administration of private enterprise bond financing support and the sci-tech innovation bond risk-sharing mechanism.

On coordinated development, Li explained that the PBC put in place a Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordination mechanism in 2016 to align financial work across the region. Over the past decade, this mechanism has been instrumental in refining the policy ecosystem, expanding finance for priority sectors and upgrading financial services.

By the end of June, outstanding loans extended by major Beijing-based financial institutions for key projects under the coordinated regional development initiative surpassed 860 billion yuan ($128.5 billion), including nearly 60 billion yuan for high-tech companies in the Beijing Municipal Administrative Center.

"We will fully leverage the three-region coordination mechanism to further drive the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region," Li said.

"First, PBC branches across the region will jointly organize industry-finance matching sessions to foster circular interplay among technology, industry and capital. Second, we will guide financial institutions to optimize products and services to support Xiong'an New Area in developing new quality productive forces. Third, we will strengthen financial service connectivity across the full chain of sci-tech R&D and pilot testing and commercialization, while deepening information sharing and financing matchmaking," he added.

Regarding financial reform, the Zhongguancun sci-tech innovation financial reform pilot zone, jointly rolled out by the PBC and eight other government departments, has achieved results over its more than three years of operation.

Li said the PBC will draw more replicable and scalable practices from the pilot zone and extend such experiences to wider areas of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, elevating the overall standard of sci-tech financial services.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn