China probes stocks regulator’s ex-chairman for disciplinary breaches

Yi Huiman, the former regulator of China’s equities market, is being investigated for disciplinary breaches, as the country’s long-standing anti-graft campaign extends into all corners of the financial industry, from banking to the stock market.

Yi, the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) from January 2019 to February 2024, has been detained by the Communist Party’s disciplinary unit for severe breaches in discipline, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which did not elaborate on the probe.

In China, the official language of suspected disciplinary breaches is often referred to as economic crimes in the statements announced by the anti-graft body. Yi’s detention was reported on Friday on Caixin.com, but the report was soon taken down from its website.

A statistician by training, Yi would be the second watch-dog regulator of China’s US$12 trillion capital market – the world’s second largest – to be investigated for graft in a decade, and the third to be fired since 2016.

Wu Qing, nicknamed the “Butcher of Brokers”, took over as chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in 2025 from Yi Huiman. Photo: SCIO

His immediate predecessor Liu Shiyu was removed from the job in 2019, before investigations exposed a range of misconduct from accepting gifts and money to favouring stock sales from his hometown in Jiangsu province. In 2016, Xiao Gang was fired for bungling the regulator’s response to a US$3 trillion market rout that happened a year earlier.

The crackdowns underscore how President Xi Jinping is trying to clean up China’s financial system after elevating the industry into a strategically significant sector for a “financial superpower”, amid the heightened risk of financial decoupling with the US amid deteriorating US-China relations. Almost 300 Chinese companies valued at US$1.1 trillion listed on US stock exchanges are poised to find alternative listing venues amid the decoupling threat.

South China Morning Post