Recently, the People's Bank of China ("PBC") has issued the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Information Technology in China's Financial Sector (the "Plan").
The Plan states that, by the end of the 13 Five-Year period, the financial information infrastructure will advance to the advanced level in the globe, and that over 110 national and industrial financial standards will be launched and updated, and the system of guaranteeing the financial network security will be further improved. To this end, the Plan calls for further improving the financial information infrastructure, optimizing the network security system, driving ahead the application of new technologies, deepening finance standardization strategies, and optimizing the information technology governance system. In addition, the Plan clearly sets forth that efforts will be made to promote in a coordinated manner establishing national financial market information infrastructure in respect of payment and clearing, custodian and settlement, deals in the financial market, and the bank of transaction reports, and to strengthen the setup of information infrastructure for such markets as the wealth management, trust, fund, and insurance; further, the network security review system will be established and put in place in the financial sector, in an effort to achieve the objective of application of the commercial code products recognized by the state commercial code administrative department to all information systems for the finance sector by 2020.