Rural Revitalization Enabled by Digital Transformation of Small and Medium Sized Rural Banks and Double Chain Linkage Model Innovation

How small and medium-sized (SMS) rural banks, as the main banks offering rural financial services, serve all-round rural revitalization is a vital realistic and policy issue for the time being. Now, SMS rural banks are confronted with many shortcomings in serving rural revitalization due to dull financial service supply chain circulation and lack of coordination with the rural industry supply chain. The research based on survey data and typical cases shows that the key to solving these problems is to realize a double chain linkage of the financial service supply chain and the rural industry supply chain: The financial service supply chain and the rural industry supply chain should make use of their common infrastructure, share the digital technology capacity and data handling capacity and promote the linkage of customers, channels and scenarios in all links of the two supply chains in a bid to realize mutual promotion and improve the quality and efficiency of the two chains and hence fuel the all-round rural revitalization through industrial revitalization. Double chain linkage can be achieved through five major effective means: in terms of data, collaborating with digital rural governance and strengthening data collection and utilization; in terms of industry, collaborating with core entity enterprises and strengthening the supply chain financial service capacity; in terms of ecology, collaborating with internet technology companies and enhancing ecological, scenario and technological enabling; in terms of channels, collaborating with rural service and focusing on channel linkage, offline network, mobile services and village financial officers, etc.; and in terms of cooperation, constructing the common infrastructure of SMS rural banks and boosting the efficiency of digital enabling innovation.