ABSTRACT
In the 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, great changes have taken place in its rural financial system. Before the reform and opening up, the evolution of the PRC’s rural financial system can be divided into two stages: first, the initial establishment of the rural financial system, with state-owned banks as the main body, supplemented by credit cooperatives and informal lending; second, the formation of a planning system of integrated state banks. After the reform and opening up, The PRC’s rural financial system has evolved in the path of the marketization of rural financial institutions and the opening up of the rural financial market. It has gone through four sub-stages of development, namely, the initial formation of the rural financial market, the functional division and coordination of different financial institutions, the initial formation of a modern rural financial market and the construction of an inclusive financial system. Overall, the PRC’s rural financial system has been developing towards a multi-level, wide coverage and sustainable one, which has been becoming more inclusive.
Nevertheless, it is still a long way to build a rural financial system that meets the requirements for serving “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” well and meets, to a high degree, the diversified financial demands in rural China.
