Mr. Yi gave a speech and took questions from the audience at the conference in the early afternoon but did not mention Mr. Guo. In his speech, Mr. Yi said that China would act resolutely against anyone who engaged in illegal financial activities without a license — a reference to a continuing campaign against so-called shadow banking.

China said last November that it would open its financial sector to greater international competition, in an unsuccessful move to tamp down President Trump’s demands for a narrowing of the United States trade deficit with China. Mr. Yi, explaining himself clearly in terms that frequently hinted at his background as an economics professor, said that the opening would continue.

“The more a sector opens, the more competitive it will become,” he said.

After a quarter-century of rapid growth, the Chinese economy stalled momentarily at the start of 2009 during the global financial crisis. China’s leaders responded by flooding the economy with credit, in a massive monetary stimulus program that exceeded those of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank in terms of the increase in broadly measured money supply.

That stimulus program allowed the Chinese economy to resume rapid growth almost immediately. But China has been adding debt ever since, building a national grid of high-speed train lines and forests of city skyscrapers as leaders have been reluctant to let growth slow.

Two credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, downgraded China’s sovereign debt last year on concerns about the buildup of domestic debt. Chinese officials have publicly acknowledged that they need to address rising leverage but contend that the country’s minimal foreign debt, strong economic growth and increasingly stringent financial regulation mean that they have ample time to defuse the problem without a sharp slowdown in economic growth.

Mr. Guo has previously served as the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and as the governor of Shandong Province — two posts that gave him considerable clout and status in the Communist Party, which oversees all agencies of the government.

By contrast, Mr. Yi is a former economics professor in Indiana who then taught in Beijing and spent the past two decades working his way up the ranks of the civil service at the central bank.