Only days after formally granting China’s lenders greater freedom to set their own deposit rates, the country’s central bank has moved in the opposite direction by quietly asking several banks not to raise rates too sharply

The “window guidance” from the People’s Bank of China is the latest sign of the delicate balance that authorities are seeking between structural reform to promote long-term growth and short-term support for a slowing economy through lower interest rates.

The PBoC has cut benchmark lending and deposit rates twice since November in an effort to lower businesses’ financing costs and cushion the slowdown.

But the bank coupled both rate cuts with parallel measures that allowed banks wider latitude to set actual deposit rates higher than the benchmark.

仅仅几天之前，中国央行(PBoC)才正式给了商业银行设定本行存款利率的更大自由度。如今，中国央行又采取了相反的动作，悄悄要求几家银行不要把利率升得太高。

此次“窗口指导”凸显了中国当局想在长短期目标间实现微妙平衡的又一次努力。长期而言，中国希望通过结构改革推动长期增长，而短期有希望降低利率以支撑经济放缓。

自去年11月以来，中国央行已两次下调基准贷款和存款利率，以降低企业融资成本并缓冲增长放缓的影响。

但是，在这两次降息的同时，中国央行都推出了一些同步措施，允许银行更自由地设定高于基准的实际存款利率。

译者/何黎