A Study On The Regional Banking Integration

Under the background that economic globalization has been well accepted as an overwhelming tendency of the world's economic development, the regional economic integration still continues to be the mainstream for the time being.The practice of European economic integration has announced the prelude of the worldwide regional economic integration with the Euro's coming into being as a historic breakthrough for the European economy and finance integration, which, in turn, has provided a favorable environment for the banking integration among European countries even other regions around the world.However, the regional financial integration and liberalization is a "double-edged sword", especially for the banking sector. It not only benefits those banks and countries involved, but also undermines the stability of the established financial system, while increasing the operating risks for multinational banks and bringing about unprecedented impacts on the cross-border banking supervision system which is lagging behind in terms of the system and means of financial regulation.China is stepping firmly toward the global economic and financial integration. And as a member in WTO, China has made sincere commitment on the complete opening up of the banking industry, of which the trade of financial services takes up a great proportion. As a result, there is an urgent need to address such a strategic issue, that is, how to deal with the challenges and seize the opportunities, especially for the four major state-owned banks which are on behalf of the Chinese banking industry. This article makes comprehensive introduction and analysis of regional integration in the banking sector both theoretically and practically, taking the practice of European Union countries as an example, in the hope of providing the Chinese domestic banking sector with some reference in terms of how to participate well in the regional integration as well as globalization.