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| Banking Crisis and Government Intervention: A Study of Chinese Financial History |
| YAN Se, XIN Xing, TENG Fei
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Guanghua School of Management, Peking University;
China Construction Bank |
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Abstract What role should the government play when faced with a banking crisis？ Should it intervene in the banking industry？ What impact will government intervention have on the banking industry？ These questions have attracted attention for a long time, with many studies attempting to answer them from different perspectives. The academic community has two main views on the role of banking organizations in the face of a crisis: one is that the existence of banking organizations expands the scope and influence of the crisis; the other is that banking organizations can share some of the crisis risk. It is not easy to answer this question accurately because it is difficult to find a case in which two similar banking organizations exist, while one of which implements a free competition system and the other implements a government intervention system separately in the same economy at the same time. However, the events of the 1930s in Shanghai and Tianjin provide us with a rare opportunity to observe this phenomenon. This article uses the financial information of Tianjin and Shanghai banks during the 1930s in combination with the political and cultural backgrounds of the two places to examine the different performances of the most important financial organizations in the two cities in that period and analyzes the role of financial organizations in response to a crisis.
Banking associations emerged as regional banking organizations after the banking industry reached a certain stage of development. In the beginning, their main function was to organize the heads of various banks to socialize regularly and exchange information. With the continuous development of modern banking and financial industries, the complexity of banking business increased and these banking associations assumed more important roles. Around the 1920s, banking associations were established in many places in China. Among them, the largest and most influential banking associations were those in Shanghai and Tianjin. However, the banking associations in these two cities were quite different. The Shanghai Banking Association was reorganized in 1931 under the promotion of the national government, and the influence of the government and chambers of commerce on this association increased. Although the Tianjin Banking Association was similar to the Shanghai Banking Association in terms of regulation and organization, it always had strong autonomy until the outbreak of the War of Resistance in 1937.
By collecting and sorting banking financial statement data and other related archives of the banking associations of Tianjin and Shanghai from the 1930s, we discuss the results of the different political environments of the two places. First, the information transparency of the two banking associations was different. The Shanghai Banking Association was subject to stricter supervision by the government. Under the requirements of the Ministry of Finance, financial information had to be regularly disclosed to the public and was subject to government review. In Tianjin, there was no external force to urge members of the banking association to disclose their accounts. Therefore, the operation of the Tianjin banking industry was extremely mysterious. Even if the government required members to disclose their accounts, such a move was resisted by local bankers. When the crisis erupted, due to the information asymmetry in Tianjin's banking industry, depositors did not understand the situation of other banks within the banking association. The run on individual banks spread rapidly within the banking association, eventually spanning the entire banking association organization and leading to a wider panic. In contrast, due to the different information transparency of the Shanghai Banking Association, the public fully understood the bank's reserve information when the crisis hit, and there was no largescale run on the association.
Second, the governmental obligations assumed by members of the banking associations in the two places were different. In Tianjin, the banking association was mainly controlled by local bankers. Therefore, when the government's requirements were not in line with the interests of the banks, the Tianjin Banking Association had no incentive to support government policies. After the 1930s, the Shanghai Banking Association was more often affected by the government. The influence of the authorities served the government's goals to a greater extent through major decisions. When the economic crisis emerged, the Shanghai Banking Association increased its investments in industry and agriculture in line with the government's request. Members of the Shanghai Banking Association had more counter cyclical operations, while those of the Tianjin Banking Association significantly reduced investment lending at this time to avoid financial risk.
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Received: 09 September 2019
Published: 02 November 2020
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