China names Lu Lei deputy governor of central bank

China’s cabinet has appointed Lu Lei as a deputy governor of the country’s central bank, making the foreign exchange veteran the third new senior official to join its top management team since July.

Lu replaces Liu Guoqiang, who reached the usual retirement age in summer, according to a list of officials released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security yesterday, leaving the People’s Bank of China with four deputy governors. The number can change over time.

Lu, 53, was moved from his position as a deputy administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, China’s forex regulator, a role he had held since 2017.

He joined the PBOC in 1996 and studied on the job at the central bank’s graduate department from 2001 to 2004 to take a doctorate in economics. He was an in-service student at the Australian National University from 1999 to 2000 and received a master’s degree in development economics.

Lu has spent most of his career at the PBOC, where he has previously served as the director of its research bureau from 2014 to 2016 and its financial stability bureau from 2016 to 2017.

While at the SAFE, Lu spoke out on many occasions to convey regulatory messages to the market in a timely manner. For example, when the US arbitrarily labeled China a “currency manipulator” in 2019, he told Yicai that China does not manipulate exchange rates.

“We only conduct macro-prudential management of cross-border capital flows, focused more specifically on managing abnormal and illegal activities,” Lu said.