Introduction
Yi Gang (Chinese: 易纲; pinyin: Yì Gāng) (born 1958) is the Governor of the People's Bank of China since 2018. He is also the former Director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.
Biography
Yi Gang was born in Beijing, March 5th, 1958. He studied at Beijing University, Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota and obtained his Ph.D in Economics from the University of Illinois, with a dissertation on statistical model selection methods. He became an Associate Professor with tenure at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and then joined the faculty of Peking University as professor, deputy director of the Center for Economics Research, and Ph.D advisor in Economics. He went to the People's Bank of China in 1997 and then successively served as Deputy Secretary-General and Secretary-General of the Monetary Policy Committee, Deputy Director-General and Director-General of the Monetary Policy Department, and Assistant Governor, as well as President of the Operations Office from September 2006 to October 2007. In December 2007, he was appointed Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China. From 2009, he served as Director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) until January 12, 2016.
Yi has published more than 40 articles in Chinese and 20 academic papers in English that have appeared in economics journals such as the Journal of Econometrics, the China Economic Review, and Comparative Economic Studies. Yi is the author of ten books, and he served as a consultant for the Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, the Journal of Econometrics, China Economic Review, Comparative Economic Studies, Economic Theory, Contemporary Policy Issues, and the Journal of Asian Economics. He also serves on the editorial board of the China Economic Review and the Journal of Asian Economics.
In October, 2016, Yi helped represent China at the semi-annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, D.C., including on a panel with Bank of England governor Mark Carney. The meetings came as the yuan was for the first time being included in the IMF’s international basket of currencies known as special drawing rights. Questions about Chinese debt levels, steel production and housing production were among those addressed in the meetings.
In March 2018, Yi was appointed as the Governor of the People's Bank of China. In July 2018, he was named Vice Chair of the Financial Stability and Development Committee.