From Government-commercial Joint Venture To Public-private Joint Venture

This article focuses on China Industrial Bank(1937-1951),one of the "small four banks",and interprets the changes in the banking industry from the perspective of the interaction between power and capital.Then it discusses the characteristics and methods of government’s organizations’ control over the banking industry in different periods,as well as the response of general banks in a long period of time.In April 1937,the Industrial Bank of China was reorganized by the National Government to via capital increase and became a bank which was jointly run by the officials and businessmen.Soon after the Anti-Japanese War broke out,China Industrial Bank cut down and merged its branches,and moved inland to the Main Rear Area.In response to the construction of the Main Rear Area’s financial network,it re-established its branches.However,due to the change in the orientation of the National Government,business development and establishment of branches were far worse than National Bank and Provincial Local Bank.In order to break through the business difficulties,China Industrial Bank plans to increase capital and reorganize,introduce commercial stocks,clear official stocks,and return to a commercial bank in the full sense of the word.In the end,due to the power struggle within the National Government,it failed on the verge of success.However,China Industrial Bank took advantage of the weakness of the National Government’s wartime financial control system to successfully expand commercial stocks and regain the initiative,reflecting the co-expansion of state power and bank capital during the war.After the war,China Industrial Bank moved back to Shanghai to take over,liquidate and demobilize the Industrial Bank of China.Under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance of the National Government,many "illegal" actions of the Pseudo-China Industrial Bank were discovered,even including the cover-ups by the head office during post-war time.And unexpectedly,the Ministry of Finance finally chose to resort to a compromise.The National Government tried to rebuild the post-war financial system and supervise the liquidation and demobilization of the banking industry,but it embodied the characteristics of "supervision but not control",which provided a historical explanation for the disorder in the post-war financial market.In May 1949,Shanghai was liberated,and China Industrial Bank was taken over by the Chinese Communist Party(CCP)and transformed into one of the first batch of "public-private partnership" banks.China Industrial Bank was different from its past performance of rejecting official stocks.Instead,it actively cooperated with the National Bank and strives to transform itself into the implementer of the National Bank’s policies.The reason behind it is far from the forced reform of the CCP as thought in the past.The business development and smooth transformation of public-private partnership banks benefited from the tendency of political power and the mobilization of employee groups.Generally speaking,the national government often adopted dual control of capital and personnel in the banking industry.The fact that bank shareholders competed for the property of equity revealed that bank power needed to rely on capital.Even when state power penetrated into commercial banks,it must be wrapped in capital.As for the reform in the banking industry after the CCP established its government,the power of capital has been continuously marginalized,and organizational control and political mobilization have become the CCP’s new focus on controlling the banking industry.China Industrial Bank’s embrace of the national banking system is not only a well-timed profit-seeking behavior,but also a helpless choice under the new economic system.