Shuli Ren, Columnist

Xi Jinping’s Banker Crusade Is Too Much Stick, No Carrots

To stem corruption in state-owned financial companies, pay cuts are not the way to go.

August 11, 2022 at 8:14 PM UTC

Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder.

Where are the carrots? — Where are the carrots?
Photographer: Birdlkportfolio/iStockphoto

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Everyone’s got to live a little. An effective politician who wants to change the world can’t be all Main Street, no Wall Street.

President Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown on China’s sprawling financial sector seems only to be accelerating, reaching the upper levels at some of the biggest state-owned institutions. In fact, the scope has been so wide and the punishments so severe that any bureaucrat in charge of a bank, a brokerage, or an insurance unit should fear possible jail time.