ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the illicit industry of shadow banking in the People’s Republic of China using a two-pronged strategy. It provides a succinct chronological overview of how shadow banking developed in China. The estimates of the “loans” sector of the underground banking also vary hugely across various institutions. In order to obtain a better idea of how particular aspects of how the shadow banking works, the second part of the chapter will “zoom in” to focus on a “micro-activity” of the industry: that of the shadow remittance agents in southern China. The inability of the banking industry to open up and adopt international practices in terms of management and day-to-day operations hampered the development of the banking industry overall. The China Banking Regulatory Commission has tried to rein in the sales by forbidding bank sales of trust products, but in reality, trust companies continue to sell their wares.
