Since the development of the Integrated National Demonstration Zone for Opening up the Services Sector and the China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone (the "Two Zones") over the past two years, the e-CNY has been fully promoted in entire Beijing Municipality and made available in more than 400,000 applicable scenarios.

Now e-CNY is available in daily consumption, transportation and travel, accommodations and dining, digital government services, and so forth. At present, residents can experience paying for their dining and entertainment needs through the new e-CNY. As introduced, Beijing leads the country in promoting innovative domestic management of fintech. This is achieved by maintaining a leading position in the number of innovative applications, technology application scenarios, and diversity of application subjects.

In the recent two years, the financial markets of Beijing have been opening up to a growing extent. Deutsche Bank China, the first foreign-incorporated bank in Beijing, is qualified as a primary dealer in the open market and as a primary underwriter in the inter-bank bond market.

On top of that, the results of a group of first-of-its-kind financial services are the first to be implemented. It takes the lead in China to carry out a pilot bank settlement account system in domestic and foreign currencies, effectively reducing the operating costs of enterprises and banks. Exchange rate hedges for small and medium-sized enterprises are effectively served through China's first foreign exchange derivatives banking-enterprise cooperation public service platform. The China Beijing Equity Exchange becomes the first exchange in China to realize on-the-spot foreign exchange settlement and transfer of foreign exchange in the original currency for cross-border transactions of real assets. This significantly improves the efficiency of fund settlement.

Facilitating capital flow across borders is an important element in the development of the "Two Zones". Throughout the past two years, Beijing has been actively benchmarking with advanced international and domestic standards and closely following the demands of market players for facilitation. At the same time, it has been continuously enhancing the quality and effectiveness of the supply of innovative policies in cross-border finance, providing efficient and diversified cross-border financial services for the real economy.

Upon taking the lead in the country in 2021 to carry out a pilot integrated capital pool for multinational companies in local and foreign currencies, the pilot policy was further upgraded in July 2022 with the addition of ten pilot enterprises in manufacturing, service, energy, and other industries in Beijing. New growth drivers will boost the development of Beijing's headquarters economy. To date, the total scale of business handled by the pilot enterprises has exceeded USD 30 billion, saving enterprises more than CNY 100 million. This effectively enhances the efficiency of cross-border fund coordination for multinational companies in both domestic and foreign currencies.

(Source: Beijing Daily)