Xiao Gang

Early Life and Education

Xiao Gang's ancestral home is Ji'an, Jiangxi; he was born on 1 August 1958. He graduated from the finance department of the Hunan Institute of Finance and Economics (now part of Hunan University) in 1981, and later earned an in-service master's degree in international economic law from Renmin University of China in 1996. He joined the People's Bank of China in 1981, holding posts including Director of the Policy Research Office (1989–1994) and President of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. From October 1996 he served as Assistant Governor of the PBOC, concurrently heading the Planning and Finance Department, the Monetary Policy Department, and the Guangdong branch. From October 1998 to March 2003 he served as Deputy Governor of the PBOC, also sitting on its Monetary Policy Committee.

In March 2003, Xiao Gang became Chairman, President, and Party Secretary of Bank of China. In August 2004, following the bank's incorporation as a joint-stock company, Bank of China Limited, he continued as Chairman and Party Secretary, while also serving as Chairman of BOC Hong Kong (Holdings) Limited from May 2003 to March 2013. On 1 June 2006, Bank of China listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (code 3988), raising more than HK$75.4 billion in what was then the largest initial public offering in the world; on 5 July 2006 it also listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (code 601988), becoming the first Chinese bank to complete simultaneous A-share and H-share listings.

Xiao Gang was sworn in as Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission on 18 March 2013. A-share markets rallied from mid-2014 through June 2015, before the Shanghai Composite Index fell roughly 30 percent over three weeks starting mid-June 2015. Under his leadership, the CSRC implemented a series of interventions, including suspending initial public offerings, barring major shareholders and executives of listed companies from reducing their holdings for six months, and directing state-linked entities — including China Securities Finance Corporation and Central Huijin Investment, dubbed the "national team" — to buy shares directly in the market. A circuit-breaker mechanism took effect on 1 January 2016 but triggered market-wide trading halts on both 4 and 7 January, prompting regulators to suspend the mechanism on the evening of 7 January after just four trading days. Xiao was widely blamed in media coverage for both the 2015 crash response and the circuit-breaker failure, though the government never officially stated the specific reason for his removal. He stepped down as CSRC Chairman on 20 February 2016, after a tenure of 1,070 days, and was succeeded by Liu Shiyu.

After Leaving Office

After stepping down as CSRC Chairman, Xiao Gang largely withdrew from administrative posts. In January 2018 he was elected a member of the 13th CPPCC National Committee and its Economic Committee, and he serves as a senior fellow at the China Finance 40 Forum. In 2020 he published a book, China's Capital Market Reform, and in public interviews reflected on the circuit-breaker failure, attributing it to several technical design flaws.