Chinese leaders plan to appoint Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, as the central bank’s new head, according to people familiar with the situation. Pan is likely to first be appointed as the bank’s Communist Party chief before he is installed as the governor, which requires appointment by the government, they said. Pan, 59 years old, has had a long career in China’s financial sector. He did his postdoctoral research at Cambridge University and was a research fellow at Harvard University. He joined the PBOC in 2012 as deputy governor, and in 2015 became the…