RDCY, OMFIF and IMI jointly launch Capital account liberalization in China on Friday, Feb. 21, 2014 in Beijing. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

The Chinese government is likely to fully open up the capital account within the next five years, to match the country's effort to achieve overall openness, said a think tank report launched Beijing on Friday, Feb. 21, 2014.

The report, Capital account liberalization in China, which was jointly drafted by Renmin University of China (RUC) Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies (RDCY), the Official Monetary of Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) in Britain, and the RUC International Monetary Institute (IMI), believes that China's capital account liberalization will gradually move toward complete openness.

Accelerating the yuan (RMB)'s convertibility to achieve capital account liberalization is a most important goal in the country's economic reform process, besides one of the key reform agenda from China's top leadership, as put forward in the latest Third Plenary of the 18th CPC Central Committee.

China has risen to be the world's second largest economy and should at some stage to become the largest. But the position of China in today's globalized world is somewhat of an anomaly.

In China, the financial markets remain heavily regulated and underdeveloped; its capital account remains closed. In the effort to bring more openness to the sector, China has acted with enough prudence, fully aware of the setbacks experienced by many other countries in the past, some of which were listed in the think tank report.