Chen Yuan

Governor, China Development Bank

Date of Birth: January 1945

Chen Yuan is one of the ’princelings’, as children of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary compatriots are known. His father, Chen Yi, was a key player in the Communist revolution, a member of Mao’s Central Committee, and wielded great influence until his death in 1995.

During the chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution, few of the princelings were able to elude labour duty and Chen Yuan was no exception: he worked at a factory in Hunan. By the time of the economic reforms of the Deng Xiaoping era (1981-1989), Chen had returned to Beijing to enrol in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and he graduated in 1981 with a master’s degree in economics. With a powerful father, Chen was well-placed to join the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, where he worked for fourteen years with a ten-year stint as a deputy governor.

In 1998, Chen was appointed head of the China Development Bank. The CDB is one of the two banks under the State Council that fund China’s foreign investments. The other, China Export-Import Bank, has become a frequent competitor for prestigious projects. Despite Chen’s political connections, he runs a tight ship, increasing CDB’s standards of transparency and resisting political pressure.

CDB backs a number of Chinese companies operating in Africa: Sinopec, China National Petroleum Corporation, China Minmetals and telecom giant Huawei. It also backed Chinalco’s US$14 bn. buy into Rio Tinto in February 2008. In June, it delivered on a $30 mn. commitment to the Uganda-based East African Development Bank.

Chen is an alternate member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and on the board of the United States-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. His Vice-Governor at CDB, Gao Jian, is the Chairman of the China-Africa Development Fund, which was set up in 2007 with $1 bn. from CDB.  3