An Indexation System for Assessing Emerging Chinese Bank Competitiveness: The Case of Huaxia Bank

A 2010 banking survey of 42 foreign bank executives by Price Waterhouse Coopers ranked competition from “domestic” Chinese banks as their primary concern. This outranked the “regulatory environment” which had been number one for the previous two years. Several reasons were cited by foreign bank managers but three stand out: (1) declining market share for foreign banks due to reduced number of multinationals doing business in China, (2) foreign banks reluctance to lend locally due to the global economic slowdown, (3) the aggressive lending strategies of Chinese banks. This paper focuses on the new reality of contemporary Chinese banking practice. We believe Chinese banks are learning and adapting. They are gaining expertise in a wide array of bank operations such as asset management, branching, securities, leasing and many more. To better understand the nature and context of growing Chinese bank competitiveness, we introduce and apply the concept financial “econiche”. Financial econiche refers to the learning and adapting that takes place in a specific financial “ecological” surrounding with attention paid to the macroeconomic need for harmonious development. Econiche theory borrows heavily from similar ideas in the natural world. We construct an evaluation indexation system based on the econiche theory, and use Huaxia bank as a case study.