Education
Xie Xuren obtained a degree in industrial economics and management at Zhejiang University (1981–84).
旭人 谢
Xie Xuren obtained a degree in industrial economics and management at Zhejiang University (1981–84).
Xie majored in industrial economics and management at Zhejiang University (1981–84), and he holds the titles of senior economist and engineer. Since 1985, Xie has worked within the fiscal arena in different capacities. At the Zhejiang Provincial Planning and Economics Commission, he was director at the Investment Office, deputy director and then director at the Comprehensive Planning Office (1985–88), and deputy director of the Provincial Commission (1988–90). His long involvement with the MOF started in 1990. He was deputy director of the Budget Department (1990–91), deputy director of the Comprehensive Planning Department (1990–93), director of the Comprehensive Planning Department and assistant to the minister (1993–94), director of the Comprehensive Reforms Department (1994–95), and vice minister of the MOF (1995–98). Xie was appointed president of the Agricultural Development Bank of China (1998–2000), followed by an appointment as vice minister at the SETC (2001–03), and then director of the SAT (2003–07).
During the last two decades, Xie has been actively involved with China’s major fiscal reforms in the transformation from a planned to a market economy. More specifically, Xie played an important role in key tax reforms by crafting the landmark Tax Distribution Reform in 1993–94 and proposing 2003’s Tax System Reform.
This system, also known as ‘Xie’s Seven Propositions’, involved incremental taxation, consumer tax, enterprise and personal income tax, real estate construction tax in cities and towns, agricultural tax, and city-rural taxation. Xie ordered the abolition of the agricultural tax in 2005 to ease the burden on farmers, breaking the centuries-old tradition of the nation’s dependence on agriculture and farmers as its tax base. In 2006, Xie helped raise the threshold of personal income tax payment from 800 to 1600 yuan per month. He also worked on unifying enterprise income tax (33 percent for domestic and 15 percent for foreign funded firms) to eliminate unfair discrimination against Chinese enterprises. After he took office at the SAT, there was a rapid increase in revenue. Some regard Xie as the most effective SAT chief, the one who has made the greatest contribution to central finance, in the past five decades.
Returning to the MOF after nine years, Xie is no stranger to the ministry. His proven fiscal expertise made him well qualified to head the MOF. Known to colleagues as personable, low-key, and with a mild disposition, Xie does not like publicity. He has a reputation as a diligent worker. When he first joined the SAT as director in 2003, he continued to read books on taxation to learn more about his job. He is also known for his practicality and simplicity. He used often to tour rural areas, and he would take few people with him, live austerely, eat at canteens, and refuse banquets. Reportedly he used to approach tax-collecting windows in different places to experience front-line services for himself.
As President Hu continues to call for better use of ‘financial means’ to manage the economy, there is likely to be additional reform and breakthrough in the fiscal area. Among the many challenges facing the new Minister of Finance, the most pressing include continuing to adopt prudent fiscal policies to combat an overheating economy, to instill stability, and to narrow the wealth gap between the rich and the poor; putting into practice a proposal to establish a public finance system initiated in 1998; and coor- dinating fiscal and monetary policies in order to strengthen and improve macroeconomic management. Xie is in a unique position not only to participate in but also to direct another round of significant fiscal and taxation system reforms in China in the coming years.
