State Administration of Foreign Exchange
agency that controls foreign exchange market activities in the People's Republic of China

The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) of the People's Republic of China is an administrative agency under the State Council tasked with drafting rules and regulations governing foreign exchange market activities, and managing the state foreign-exchange reserves, which as of April 2026 stood at $3.41 trillion for the People's Bank of China. The current director is Zhu Hexin.
Background
In 1979, the State Council approved the People's Bank of China's Proposal on the Reform of China's Banking System. This resulted in the establishment of the State Central Administration of Foreign Exchange (SCAFE), which managed China's then-small amount of foreign reserves. Although under the authority of the State Council, SCAFE was administered by the People's Bank of China. After the State Council reorganization in 1983, SCAFE became a subsidiary of the People's Bank of China and became known by its current name, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. In 1988, SAFE was elevated to report directly to the State Council, but remained under People's Bank of China's management.
SAFE has a vice-ministry level position within the Chinese bureaucracy. Historically, its lead executive has also generally held the position of vice governor of the People's Bank of China.
Function
SAFE is the foreign exchange management administrative body of the People's Bank of China.
“State Administration of Foreign Exchange” enters the record as agency that controls foreign exchange market activities in the People's Republic of China. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what State, Administration and Foreign can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1512824. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 1979, 1983 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “State Administration of Foreign Exchange” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.