China's Insurance Market Opening Strategy Research

With the development of the China's market economy and the globalization of the world financial market, China's insurance industry is facing both opportunities and challenges, especially when China is going to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Therefore, relevant policy and arrangements are expected to be considered. The paper mainly focuses on the opening policy of China~ s insurance market in regard of its present status on the basis of some normative and quantitative analysis. Since the present situation of insurance industry in China is similar, in some aspect, to that of Japan and Taiwan of a few years ago, the paper introduces some useful measures adopted during the process of the two countries?insurance market opening to the outside world.After analyzing the present opening status of China's insurance market and main problem confronted in this process, the paper points out that China's insurance industry has its own characteristics, and the supervision authority should formulate a proper opening policy to deal with all kinds of latent risks and difficulties.The conclusion reached in the final part of the paper, also the main part of this article, is that the strategy of the opening of China's domestic insurance market to foreign investors should be centered around a oderate opening policy? that is neither should China protects its domestic insurance market from any entry by foreign insurance institutions, nor should China adopts the policy of complete National Treatment, but a mixture of the two, due to the present status of China's domestic insurance industry. According to the above analysis, the paper raised the general strategic target and basic principls for the further opening of China's insurance market to foreign insurance institutions in the future. In addition, specific policy arrangements and advice concerning the opening of domestic insurance market to foreign insurance institutions are also included in the paper. All discusses in this article in regard of the opening of the domestic insurance market are based upon the backwardness of the China's insurance industry, with developing the domestic insurance industry as the final goal.