Research On The Accountability Of Financial Regulators In China

Since the establishment of the CBRC, the accountability of China’s financial regulators have achieved remarkable achievements. For example, financial regulators has set up official website for the public to freely get regulatory information;while formulating new regulations or rules, financial regulators use the official website to ask the public for advice; financial regulators periodically prepare and publish annual reports on information disclosure and so on.Although the accountability of China’s financial regulators has made strong progress, there are still something needed further improvement. Most financial regulatory laws and regulations identify accountability as a form of "hold-to-account", another core element about " call-to-account " has not received enough attention. Essentially, accountability not only attach importance to "hold-to-account", but also pay more attention to the ex-ante restriction of power, which can reduce the possibility of nonfeasance or improper conduct by financial regulators,so as to ensure that financial regulators’decision or act are scientific.Though financial regulators ask the public for advice,but the lack of effective feedback mechanism may lead to that the public have no way to know whether their views have been adopted or not, and if not adopted,what the reason is.The people’s Bank of China Law states:people’s Bank of China shall report to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on the monetary policy and the financial operation of the operation. But it is still not clear that the time and frequency of report to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress,which would lead to the lack of effectiveness about accountability of financial regulators.Law and regulations provide that the financial regulators is independent, and the question is whether the stronger accountability will threaten the independence of the financial regulators? In order to solve such problem,the ralationship between accountability and independence should be made clear.Actually,the ralationship between them is mutually reinforcing and complementary,for the reason that the core elements of accountability contains that financial regulators should explain its decisions and actions for specific authorities to the public,and demonstrate the rationality of regulatory activities. Therefore,the accountability of Financial Regulators can restricct and regulate their power,meanwhile not harm their independence.Accountability makes regulatory action lawfull,strengthens the independence of financial regulators. That is to say,good accountability arrangements can effectively regulate and restrict the power of financial regulators, and also enhance the independence.In addition, the strong accountability arrangements can effectively guide financial regulators to exercise regulatory power correctly, then the correct operation of supervision power is the key elements to improve the efficiency of supervision. On the contrary, the weakness or absence of accountability would likely lead to abuse of power. More importantly,bureaucracy and corruption may directly reduce the regulatory efficiency. All in all, the relationship between the strength of accountability and the level of regulatory efficiency is a positive correlation.