The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has issued a public statement calling for the establishment of a credit system covering all of Chinese society.
In a statement issued on 11 October PBOC called for “improving a credit system that covers all of society, raising the quality of credit information services, protecting sovereign information rights and interests, and driving the high-quality development of China’s credit ratings sector.”
PBOC said that efforts to create a society-wide credit system in China would make extensive use of both market forces and digital technology.
“PBOC upholds a twin-driver development model of the ‘government + market’,” said the statement. “[PBOC] has gradually created a development situation involving the coordinated development and mutual reinforcement of the financial credit information foundational database and market-based credit ratings institutions.”
In future, PBOC said that it would uphold the development of a “market-based, rule-of-law based and internationalised” credit ratings sector.
“[PBOC] will drive cross-border credit cooperation, rear up credit institutions and credit ratings institutions that are internationally competitive, and service the strategy of national opening.”
PBOC highlighted improvements to the ability of micro-and-small enterprises in China to obtain financing thanks to the collection of credit-related information by local platforms.
As of the end of August 2022, China had seen the creation of more than 40 local credit ratings platforms that have collected data on 90.49 million market entities and integrated with 3280 financial institutions.
PBOC said that this had helped around 906,600 enterprises to obtain 3.41 trillion yuan in loans, of whom more than 60% were taking out their first loan.
