10 Chinese Provinces Launch Fintech Regulatory Trials

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A total of ten province-level administrative entities in China have obtained approval from the central government to launch their own fintech trials.

As of the end of 2019 Chinese provinces that had obtained approval for fintech trials from the central government included:

  • Beijing,
  • Shanghai,
  • Jiangsu,
  • Zhejiang,
  • Fujian,
  • Shandong,
  • Guangdong,
  • Chongqing,
  • Sichuan,
  • Shaanxi.

On 7 December 2019 the Chinese central bank’s business regulation department revealed that the Beijing Fintech Application Trial (北京金融科技应用试点) had seen the approval of a total of 46 projects involving 77 entities, encompassing areas including finance, healthcare, aged care and agriculture, and involving technologies such as facial payments, electronic welfare and electronic medicare cards.

The Chinese central bank announced the launch of the Beijing Fintech Innovation Regulatory Trial in December, focusing on areas including secure applications, daily life, data resource integration and regtech.

With regard to regtech, the Beijing trial is making use of technologies including big data and artificial intelligence to raise its ability to detect and handle money-laundering, fraudulent fund-raising, late payment of loans and misappropriation of funds.

Both Beijing and Shenzhen have established their own fintech application trial leadership teams headed by senior figures from municipal government, as well as related communications and coordination mechanisms.

In other provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong key leadership roles for fintech trials are held by the the representatives or heads of the local offices of the Chinese central bank.

Shanghai’s fintech trials focus in particular upon four key areas including bill risk detection, banking risk control systems, and lending and wealth management risk controls.

Zhejiang province has proposed the creation of a “digitised central bank financial risk prevention and control platform” (数字央行金融风险防控平台), as well as a “financial risk joint-prevention and joint-control mechanism” (金融风险联防联控机制).

Guangdong province is suing technology including big data to better analyse illicit financial activity, while Shenzhen municipality has proposed the establishment of a “smart risk-control platform” that will increase the accuracy of identification of suspicious activity.

Sichuan plans to gather financial data on private and micro-and-small enterprises for collation and comparison, as well as establish an anti-money laundering monitoring platform and establish a unified password services platform.

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