Listed banks came out at the top of a competitiveness ranking list compiled recently by Chinese economists, beating their State-owned heavyweight peers despite their massive recapitalizations by the government.

China Merchants Bank, China Minsheng Banking Corporation and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, all national joint-stock banks listed on the domestic stock market, dominated the first three places on the list of "Integrated Competitiveness" among all Chinese commercial banks, including the four State-owned banks, 10 joint-stock banks and 112 city commercial banks.

The rankings, believed to be the most comprehensive so far for Chinese commercial banks, were compiled by the Research Centre for China Banking Competitiveness of the Chinese magazine The Banker, and were published on Saturday.

The China Construction Bank (CCB) and Bank of China (BOC), the two State-owned lenders which received a combined US$45 billion capital injection at the end of 2003 from the Chinese Government, ranked fourth and fifth on the list.

The other two State-owned lenders - the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and Agricultural Bank of China - came out 10th and 13th respectively.

"Although China's banking reform has been slow and largely lags behind economic development, the overall competitiveness has been improving in the past few years," said Wang Songqi, editor-in-chief of The Banker and deputy director of the Finance Research Centre under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The relatively young joint-stock banks grew rapidly in recent years, and made substantial progress in terms of innovation and capital adequacy after listing, mostly in the past 10 years.

The three banks at the top of the "Integrated Competitiveness" list also led eight of the 12 single-indicator lists.

For the remaining four lists, the ICBC, the largest Chinese commercial bank, came top in terms of market influence, the CCB came out first in capital adequacy, while the BOC led the list of international competitiveness.

(China Daily March 14, 2005)