State-controlled Commercial Bank Internationalization Issues

With the increasing open of Chinese market, the higher extend of economic dependency and amalgamation; China has been involved in the globalization tide of economy and finance. As we have entered the WTO and have to open financial services much further, our developing and perfecting banks have directly faced and taken part in the international competition directly, so internationalization has been the inevitable choice of our commercial banks. The internationalization operation of Chinese commercial banks complies with the development trend of the global economic integration, accelerates the progress of Chinese open policy, and satisfies the development need of the banks themselves. So the research on the internationalization of our commercial banks has a full practical significance.Foreign scholars have done more researches on the bank internationalization, which center on the theory and motivation, but there is now no complete evaluation system. Although domestic scholars have been aware of the importance of studying this issue, existing research results are less. Since the "big four" state-owned banks account for a large proportion of the country's financial system, and play an decisive role in our country's economic and financial development, so we choose the four state-owned commercial banks as the study object.Starting with the general theoretic research of bank internationalization, this paper makes a brief introduction of the definition and contents of the bank internationalization, and then summarizes the mainstream motivation theories of bank internationalization abroad, from which we can find some ideas revelatory to our banks. Secondly, this paper takes Citibank and HSBC for an example, based on the analysis and comparison of the process and the strategic characteristic of their internationalization process, we get some development experiences. Thirdly, based on our four stated-owned commercial banks' specific conditions, this paper studies the present situation of the "big four" state-owned banks, analyzes existing problems, and analyzes the ownership advantage, the internalization advantage and the location advantage of the four banks based on the OLI theory. Finally, the paper puts forward the strategy that the four banks should identify their own strategic positions according to the actual condition. The author believes that it is wise to choose the comprehensive multinational banks in order to create our own financial carriers. We should continue to take Hong Kong and Singapore as the base region in the whole internationalization process. And we should choose an advantageous opportunity to enter the global international center, the emerging markets such as Africa, and regard the ASEAN region, the four ASEAN countries in particular, as the priority target market of present development.Finally, in response to the analysis above, this paper puts forward some relevant proposals on the internationalization of the state-owned commercial banks, including the internationalization of strategy, the internationalization of institution, the internationalization of business, the internationalization of staff, the internationalization of management, and the internationalization of supervision. Specifically, we should enact rational international strategies individually for each bank; use the combination entry modes of new establishment and M&A, the localization strategy to achieve the internationalization of institution; through increasing business types, improving business innovative ability, achieving the diversification management, enhancing the integration of the local currency business and the foreign currency business; as for the internationalization of management, the four banks need to change their management patterns abroad, implement asset-liability ratios management, establish and perfect the internal control mechanism, risk prevention mechanism; concerning the internationalization of supervision, the government should reinforce policy support, and perfect the financial supervise system.