I show that issuing credit cards helps the bank compete for retail deposits in China. When credit card growth increases by 1%, retail deposit growth is expected to rise by 0.2% with regard to peers next year. This effect is stronger for small joint-stock banks compared with big state-owned banks. This is realized by introducing new credit card holders to visit the branch and open a savings account. DID test shows that after a shock that tightened new account opening, banks with higher credit card growth experienced a harsher decline in retail deposit growth. This paper highlights the customer introducing benefit of credit card promotion, which can provide an alternative explanation for the intensified competition in the credit card market in China. It also unveils the strategy that small banks can use to compete for the deposits of big state-owned banks, who intrinsically has more branches and retail customers.

We document that monetary policy has asymmetric effects on investments by large and small firms in China. Large firms’ investment are highly responsive to monetary expansions, but less affected by monetary contractions. In contrast, small firms’ investments are less responsive to monetary expansions, but significantly affected by monetary contractions. We argue that this asymmetric responses of large and small firms stem from their differential access to credits in a two-tiered banking system. Large firms borrow from the big state-owned banks, which have a strong depositor base, whereas small firms borrow mainly from small banks which does not have a large depositor base and therefore rely heavily on the inter-bank market for financing their loans to small firms. We build a DSGE model with heterogeneous banks, heterogeneous firms, and an inter-bank market that is calibrated to the Chinese data. We show that the model’s quantitative predictions about the effects of monetary policy on large and small firms are consistent with the facts we documented.

We investigate banks' issuance choices of wealth management products (WMPs), which are both interest rate deregulation vehicles and shadow deposits without explicit government insurance. Support for an inverted-U shape between market share and WMP issuance is found in national market. State-owned banks are reluctant to issue WMPs due to their monopoly power, very small banks do not have the capacity to issue while small and medium banks issue WMPs intensively as a regulatory arbitrage. Moreover, the geographic deregulation in 2009 stimulates the bank competition in the local market, incumbent banks take advantage of WMPs to fight off the new entering banks.

Using a proprietary loan data set, we study how a large state-owned bank uses its internal ratings in loan granting decisions around China’s 2008 economic stimulus programme that relies on bank credit for financing. We find that there is little change in the rating process of the bank, and internal ratings remain a valid, albeit weaker, predictor of loan interest rates in the stimulus period. Weakened rating-interest rate relation is concentrated for borrowers from the industries that the stimulus programme focuses on, for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), for bank branches operating in provinces with a low level of credit market marketization, or when the credit rater and loan officer have no collaboration before. We also find that interest rates remain a valid predictor of ex-post loan outcomes in the stimulus period. Overall, there is no evidence that loan decisions of the state-owned bank are severely compromised in the economic stimulus period as speculated by some media. By showing how a state-owned bank maneuvers between supporting government stimulus initiative and maintaining market-based lending, we contribute to the limited literature on the roles of internal ratings in loan contracting decisions, and add to the debate over the roles of state-owned banks.

We document that monetary policy has asymmetric effects on investments by large and small firms in China. Large firms’ investment are highly responsive to monetary expansions, but less affected by monetary contractions. In contrast, small firms’ investments are less responsive to monetary expansions, but significantly affected by monetary contractions. We argue that this asymmetric responses of large and small firms stem from their differential access to credits in a two-tiered banking system. Large firms borrow from the big state-owned banks, which have a strong depositor base, whereas small firms borrow mainly from small banks which does not have a large depositor base and therefore rely heavily on the inter-bank market for financing their loans to small firms. We build a DSGE model with heterogeneous banks, heterogeneous firms, and an inter-bank market that is calibrated to the Chinese data. We show that the model’s quantitative predictions about the effects of monetary policy on large and small firms are consistent with the facts we documented.

Banking competition may enhance or hinder the financing of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Using a survey on the financing of China’s SMEs combined with detailed bank branch information, we investigate how concentration in the local banking market affects the availability of credit. It is found that lower market concentration alleviates financing constraints. The un-concentrated presence of joint stock banks has a larger effect on alleviating credit constraints, while the presence of state-owned banks has a smaller effect, than the presence of city commercial banks.

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.

This study examines the relations between leverage and investment in China’s listed firms, where corporate debt is principally provided by stateowned banks. We obtain three major findings. First, there is a negative relation between leverage and investment. Second, the negative relation between leverage and investment is weaker in firms with low growth opportunities and poor operating performance than in firms with high growth opportunities and good operating performance. Third, the negative relation between leverage and investment is weaker in firms with a higher level of state shareholding than in firms with a lower level of state shareholding. Overall, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the state-owned banks in China impose fewer restrictions on the capital expenditures of low growth and poorly performing firms and also firms with greater state ownership. This creates an over-investment bias in these firms.