We investigate the impact of strategic investors on bank efficiency in the context of regional economic development. The data on Chinese city commercial banks operating regionally are well-suited for the study. Findings suggest that strategic investors significantly increase efficiency in Chinese city commercial banks; the impact of strategic investors on the efficiency of Chinese city commercial banks is negatively correlated to the level of regional economic development. The negative correlation of the impact of strategic investors on Chinese city commercial banks’ efficiency with regional economic development may be explained by the mix of the local official promotion system and the city commercial banks’ governance structure.

Great credit risk is a big headache which blocks the development of the banking sector of China. Based on the panel data of the Chinese banking sector from 2002 to 2006, this paper empirically examines the effects of foreign strategic investors’ participation on the risk behavior of Chinese banks. The results show that foreign strategic investors (FSI) had a positive, but limited impact on the credit risk of Chinese banks. Further analysis reveals that the risk management abilities of Chinese banks have improved apparently when the proportion of shareholding of the leading foreign strategic investors exceeds 15 percent, which results in a significant drop of the credit risk. However, due to the ‘minority ownership’ restriction on foreign investors' stock shares, the positive effect of the participation of foreign strategic investors is limited. The visible decline in both non-performing loans (NPLs) and the NPL ratio of Chinese banks mainly reflects the rapid growth of China's economy and benefits a lot from the massive financial restructuring of state-owned banks.