银行与客户的法律关系;中英银行法之比较(英文)
孙文杰
【全文】
Bank and Customer Relationship: A Comparative Study between the UK and the People’s Republic of China
1. Introduction
Before start of concrete comparisons, it is necessary to outline the rapid changing of Chinese banking industry over the past two decades. The unprecedented ‘socialist market economy’ have brought various changes into Chinese legal system. The banking law, as one of products of market economy, is inevitably following the steps of economic reform. Since the so-called economic transition has not completed, particular the reform of financial system, today’s comparative study should be regarded as a temporary comparison. Actually, the crucial changing of Chinese banking system may be happened in the coming several years.
Before the year of 1980, the People’s Bank of China was the only bank. It carried out a mix function of central bank and commercial bank. The said ‘commercial’ was just in name. For business customers, it implemented State’s lending plans because banks and their borrowing customers were all state-owned entities. For private customer, its business was no more than savings. In the first half of 1980s, the separateness of four specialized banks presented a landmark of independence of the People’s Bank as a central bank. They were named ‘specialized banks’ because they dealt in specific business respectively and, bearing a lot of policy lending, they could not be called as ‘commercial banks’. At that time, the bank and custom relationship was rather an administrative one reflected on two symbols: governors rather than banks set down the lending quotas; the banking business was rigorously partitioned (e.g. Bank of China provided services of foreign currency and exchange, Agriculture Bank provided for agricultural investment). Since the second half of 1980s, a series of strategies began to promote the reform of bank system. First, the specialization of banking business was broke down and the four specialized banks turned to comprehensive banks, so their name had been changed into ‘state-owned commercial banks’. Secondly, joint stock banks appeared into the scene of Chinese banking community , and over 5200 urban credit cooperatives emerged within ten years. At the beginning of the 1990s, since the establishment of two stock markets and announcement of marketability of banks, both the customers and the bankers were confused by the chaos of banking service. A banker might be a stockbroker, a trust company, a securities trader, a real estate merchant and even a taxi company. In a word, where might be profits there might be banking investment. This was a period that the customers took most benefits from banks’ high interest rate and the banks lost most money in their random investments. The appearance of chaos was not surprising, because the banking service had been under a legal framework of general policy and administrative rules rather than laws. Too much ‘state money’ was devoted into the primary commercialization test of banking. Failures of banks’ investments and the disorder of financial market were the contributing reasons for the enactment of two initial statutes relating to banking in 1995. They were Law of People’s Bank of China and Law of Commercial Banks. Since then the building of Chinese banking law system was erected two pillars. These two statutes first defined what was a bank, what was bank business, what was the function of central bank and what were the bank’s obligations etc.
