China plays a key role in promoting green finance globally: economists

An international seminar on green finance has been held in Beijing, with representatives highlighting China's key role in promoting green finance both domestically and globally.

Discussions concerning methods to promote green finance, as well as some specific tools and products in this field, have been made during the event organized by the Research Center for Climate and Energy Finance.

UN Assistant Secretary-General Elliott Harris explained some of the main characters concerning the development of green finance currently.

"First, green finance itself as a theme has in fact developed quite dramatically over the past few years, and now we are at a different stage in this process, the 2nd key point is that notwithstanding on the progress we've made, it's imperative that we speed up our progress, and that we achieve true scale in the transformations in finance and business that are already underway," said Harris.

He added that green finance could also be a big help in achieving results regarding sustainable development.

Yin Yong, vice governor of China's central bank, said China has been playing an important part in boosting the globalization of green finance.

"China has been devoting great efforts to promoting international cooperation on green finance. During its G20 presidency last year, we initiated the topic of green finance and launched the G20 green finance study group co-chaired by the People's Bank of China and the Bank of England," said Yin.

Another highlight of the seminar is how to enhance green investment while promoting the Belt and Road Initiative.

Sherry Madera, Special Adviser for Asia from the City of London, said green finance has already been recognized as important to Belt and Road infrastructure projects.

"I was here (in Beijing) during the Belt and Road forum in May, when President Xi Jinping made a very comprehensive speech about his vision about the Belt and Road, and the reference in those projects to be in green was throughout the speech, and I think that all of the other participants in that forum also underscore how important it was, that the project didn't just go ahead, that they actually went ahead in a sustainable way, and the impact in terms of the environment was minimized," said Madera.

She added that green finance has become a major highlight in terms of bilateral cooperation between China and the UK.

"Green finance I think is one of the great examples of the UK and China working together to bring this topic to the world stage together, so the G20 working group on green finance was new during China's presidency last year, and it will continue to maintain (its role) during this year and next year, and that's something down to the relationship between UK and China, so I think that green finance is a really good example of how that diplomatic ties continued," said Madera.