Finance & economics | Dynastic equilibrium

China modernises its monetary policy

With a little imperial inspiration, China shifts to a more market-based interest-rate system

QIN SHIHUANG was the emperor who first unified China, through bloody conquest more than two millennia ago. Known for starting the Great Wall and burying scholars alive, he has a new claim to fame: the central bank has drawn on his construction of a national road system to help explain its new monetary system. In a report on August 11th, the People’s Bank of China seized on an idiom derived from his road-building experience: it had “shaved off mountain peaks and filled valleys” in managing liquidity.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Dynastic equilibrium”

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