Speaking at a China General Chamber of Commerce USA event, New York-based Chinese Consul General Zhang Qiyue said barriers will be removed or eased for foreign investors in the country’s financial sector and that market entry standards will be the same for Chinese and foreign banks. Mrs Zhang is the former Chinese Ambassador in Belgium. She further promised that the reforms would be “beyond expectations”. She made the remarks before U.S. President Trump imposed USD60 billion worth of new tariffs on Chinese imports.

“Many more measures will be introduced this year and some of the measures will be beyond the expectations of foreign companies and investors,” she said. Zhang’s comments echo those made by China’s Premier Li Keqiang at the end of the National People’s Congress session. “We will fully open up the manufacturing sector, with no mandatory technology transfers allowed, and we will protect intellectual property,” Li told a press conference in Beijing. Zhang provided more detail on the scope of market openings China’s government is planning for foreign investors. “The general manufacturing sector will be completely opened up and access to sectors like telecommunications, medical services, education, elderly care and new energy vehicles will be expanded,” Zhang said in New York. “China will phase in the opening up of bank card clearing and other markets, lift restrictions on the scope of operations of foreign-invested insurance companies and ease or lift restrictions on the share of foreign-owned equity in companies in sectors including banking, securities, fund management, futures and financial asset management.”

“China could be more specific on the timetable for the financial liberalization,” Nicholas Lardy, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told the South China Morning Post in a recent interview. “They’ve announced the intention to raise these caps, but I don’t think they’ve put out the implementing regulations that will allow it, and they haven’t been fully clear about in which of these financial sub-sectors the caps are going to be eliminated completely,” Lardy said. “This makes it difficult for financial institutions to plan,” the South China Morning Post reports.