Mr. Zhou Xiaochuan  

Governor of The People’s Bank of China

（September 21, 2004）

 

Respected guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Good Morning. First of all, please allow me, on behalf of the Leading Office of the State Council for Pilot Joint-Stock Reform of the State-Owned Commercial Banks, to congratulate on the incorporation of China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB).

The incorporation of China Construction Bank Corporation enjoys a great significance in the growth history of China Construction Bank. China Construction Bank ever participated in and supported the development of China’s economy as well as opening-up process. Since its establishment, it grew step by step from scratch to today’s largest state-owned commercial bank. CCB has always played an important role and scored remarkable achievements for the half century. We can see CCB’s active participation in the construction of large and medium-sized investment projects in all historic periods, for example in the first five-year plan. CCB was always committed to bolstering China’s economic growth, making expansion progressively and undertaking responsibilities carefully. CCB made a lot of contributions to China’s economic development. In 1990s, CCB was transformed from a specialized sate-owned bank into a state-owned commercial bank. In this process, the Bank continued to make financial innovations, for instance, CCB is the father of the first joint-venture investment bank (China International Capital Corporation Limited) and of the first financial asset management company (China Cinda Asset Management Corporation). In addition, the Bank has promoted the reform in system and mechanism step by step: strengthen internal control and risk management, enhance financial innovation capacity and capability of offering services to clients. In this way, CCB’s market competitiveness has been enhanced progressively, asset quality improved considerably, profitability raised year by year. All these have laid a solid foundation for the shareholding restructuring program.

To conduct joint-stock reform of the state-owned commercial banks and establish modern banking system are an important decision made by the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council. The reform has a profound bearing on the success of overall financial reform, the future of China's national financial industry and economic development. Today, with the rapid development of economic and financial globalization, China has become an important part of the world financial market. In 2006, China's financial industry will open comprehensively to foreign competition and the financial market will, to a larger extent, be integrated with the global financial system. We will face fierce competition from foreign financial institutions with robust financial strength, sound governance, strong ability of financial innovation and rich experiences in international competition. The Chinese banks will have to establish competitive advantage by conducting further internal reforms in an effort to assume the historic responsibility of rising up to the challenge of foreign banks, actively taking part in international financial competition and revitalizing national financial industry.

Today, we celebrate here the incorporation of Construction Bank Corporation, which marks a milestone of the historical reform. However, incorporation is not the ultimate goal of the joint-stock reform of the state-owned commercial banks. The key and essence is to transform operational mechanism. Thus, we can see China Construction Bank continues to face daunting tasks of reform and development.

I hope that China Construction Bank Corporation, under the leadership of the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council, can further strengthen its sense of historical responsibility and urgency and seize the opportunity to deepen reform, improve corporate governance and internal control mechanism, transform management perception and operational mechanism, strengthen capital constraint, improve service and enhance efficiency. With these efforts, we expect China Construction Bank to become an internationally competitive modern commercial bank with standard corporate governance, adequate capital, strong internal control, safe management, and sound and efficient service.

In conclusion, I would like to once again, on behalf of the Leading Office of the State Council for Pilot Joint-Stock Reform of the State-Owned Commercial Banks, to send my best wishes for the incorporation and future of China Construction Bank Corporation.

Thank you.