With the approval from the State Council, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, wrote a letter on October 6, 2015 to Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in the capacity of Governor of the IMF for China, officially informing Ms. Lagarde of China's decision to adopt the Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS) of the IMF. This marks that China has completed all the processes for subscribing to the SDDS and will observe the SDDS to disseminate its statistical data. On October 7, Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China and administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), and David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the IMF, attended a ceremony to celebrate China's adoption of the SDDS during the annual meeting of the IMF in Lima.

Subscribing to the SDDS, a necessary step in reform and opening up, will further improve the transparency, credibility and International comparability of China’s macroeconomic statistics, further unveil China's macroeconomic conditions to provide timely and accurate basis for decision-making on the macro-economy, and deepen the international community's and the public's understanding of China's economy to expand China's participation in global economic cooperation. The adoption of the SDDS is another bold step forward in improving China's statistical system and transparency.

To help data users to fully understand the statistical methodologies of China's foreign-related departments, scientifically assess the coverage, timeliness, availability and authenticity of the data, and reasonably judge the conditions of China's foreign-related economy, the SAFE hereby releases SDDS metadata for the Balance of Payments, the International Investment Position and the External Debt Statistics Interpretation Documents for reference.