This paper investigates China's pattern of decade-plus delays in implementing banking reforms. It identifies the ideological factors involved, particularly the persistent suspicion of 'market forces' as the economy's driving force. The dependence on the banks to finance the economic and social...

This paper investigates why China's leaders were unable to halt the mounting crisis in funding local government from 2009. The analysis traces a long history of co-option of the banking system by local officials. The national leadership was obstructed in monitoring and controlling the escalating...

The transformation of the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation from a colonial bank with a limited future after World War II into a major global financial group did not take place in a competitive banking environment. The laisser-faire colonial administration was extremely reluctant to...

This paper reviews the banking response to Hong Kong¡¦s industrial take-off in the 1950s and the transition to a service economy and regional financial centre in the 1970s. Adjustments to bank business models were frequently flawed, and bankers were prone to self-destructive behaviour. The...

This paper examines the impact of 'ideological' preconceptions on Hong Kong policy-making both during and after the colonial era. An abiding commitment to laisser faire reflected demographic anxieties that were not dispelled by sustained, high-speed economic growth. Economic pessimism was...

2011 saw China overtaken by alarming financial fallout from the 2008 economic stimulus package to counter the global financial crisis. This paper shows how the decision to rely on local governments to fund the bulk of the package imposed serious strains on the banking system and reversed a...

There is a growing consensus that China's banking remains woefully dysfunctional despite almost 40 years of reforms. This paper explores why the government has found this situation both tolerable and affordable. Historically, the state has passed much of the heavy but indirect costs of economic...

An Anglo-American regulatory ¡¥culture¡¦ became associated with 30 years of worldwide economic reforms, global growth and monetary stability. American and British officials identified major sources of instability in their own financial markets before 2007 but remained non-interventionist,...

This paper uses four case studies to review the performance of the Anglo-American regulatory ¡¥culture¡¦. In the decade before the global financial crisis, American and British officials were almost identical in their analysis of and non-interventionist responses to identified threats from...

Hong Kong¡¦s Chinese banks survived the loss in 1949 of their traditional role in serving the trade and currency needs of Mainland clients and the restrictions imposed on the local gold market. But they allowed foreign banks to overtake them in financing the new manufacturing sector in Hong...