Li Dong, School of Finance and Trade

Abstract: Finance is the core of modern economy, and banking plays an essential role in the whole financial system. Instability of the commercial banking system constitutes a threat to the safety and stability of economy and finance; therefore, maintaining the long-term and steady development of commercial banks is of great significance for the stability and development of economy and finance. The sustainable development of commercial banks defines  as  the  ultimate  realization  of  the  overall, sustainable, balanced  and  steady development of commercial banks on the premise of abiding by the objective laws of financial and self development by means of establishing and perfecting the operation and management system, optimizing the internal operation mechanism, reasonably and effectively developing and allocating financial resources including funds, organization and manpower, improving the financial   efficiency, enhancing profitability, risk prevention and control ability and business innovation ability, providing quality financial products and  services, creating favorable enterprise culture and brand image and constantly adjusting to the change of economic and social development environment; and meanwhile, vigorously coordinating scale and efficiency, management and innovation, quality and speed, long-term and short-term interests, self and social benefits, not at the cost of future benefits, in the pursuit of current development. To measure and compare the sustainable development level of commercial banks will contribute to an accurate command of the current and future situation of the development of commercial banks, and formulation of countermeasures boosting the sustainable development of commercial banks, thus the achievement of the coordinated development of commercial banks and the economy, society and environment that interact with one another.

Research on the sustainable development of commercial banks of this dissertation is mainly guided by the sustainable development theory of finance, meanwhile, drawing lessons from theoretical achievements including theory of financial ecology and theory of banking crisis. To begin with, this dissertation defines the connotation of the sustainable development of commercial banks, and systemetically elaborates on the

Definition, features, general principle and basic requirements of the   sustainable development of commercial banks, and emphatically analyzes the postivie effects of the sustainable development of commercial banks in the development of banking, economy and society. Furthermore, it makes an analysis of major factors that affect the sustainable development of commercial banks, and respectively elaborates on four aspects of resource, capability, efficieny and environment, and seeks out the typical indexes that reflect these factors to constitute the index systems of evaluating the sustainable development of commercial banks. Then, it screens the evaluating index systems by clustering analysis and establishes an index systems of measuring the sustainable development of commercial banks, which can be directly used for measurement, by integrating the availability of data and the representativeness of indexes. Based on this, it meaures the level of sustainable development of commercial banks by means of factor anaysis. Finally, it evaluates and compares the level of sustainable development of 5 large  state-owned  commercial banks,8 joint-stock  commercial banks  and  3  listed commercial banks during the 3-year period from 2009 to 2011.It conducts both comprehensive comparison and classified comparison; it compares both the mesurement indexes and factor scores; it compares not only the overall sustainable development level of commercial banks that belong to different types, but also the sustainable development level of commercial banks within the  same type. By comparison, it finds out the advantages and disadvantages of different  types of commercial bank  in terms of sustainable development, and then formulates the overall strategy and specific measures to boost the sustainable development of commercial banks.

This dissertation draws the conclusion by measurement and comparison: in 2011,the sustainable  development  level  of  China  Merchants  Bank, Industrial  Bank, China Minsheng Bank rank as the top three, while Huaxia Bank, Agricultural Bank of China rank  as  the  bottom  two; overall, the  sustainable  development  level  of joint-stock commercial banks is higher than that of large state-owned commercial banks, while the sustainable development level of large state-owned commercial banks is higher than that of listed city commercial banks. Large state-owned commercial banks have comparative advantages in the aspects of asset size, intermediate business income, capital strength, profitability, policy   support, etc; joint-stock  commercial  banks   have   comparative advantages in the aspects of risk prevention, human  resources, liquidity management, salary and welfare, development capability, customer service,etc; listed city commercial banks have comparative advantages in the aspects of cost control, profit per capita, social benefits,etc.

From 2009 to 2011,within the system of large state-owned commercial banks, the sustainable development level of China Construction Bank and Industrial &Commercial Bank of China rank as the top two, and Bank of China and Bank of Communications rank in the middle, and Agricultural Bank of China rank at the bottom. With in the system of listed joint-stock commercial banks, the sustainable development level of China Merchants Bank and Industrial Bank rank constantly as the top two, while Huaxia Bank rank at the bottom. The sustainable development level of China Minsheng Bank ranks steadily as the third or the fourth, and the ranking of China CITIC Bank is on the rise, and the ranking of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China Everbright Bank and Shenzhen Development Bank is on the decline. The sustainable development level of listed city commercial banks and rural commercial banks is apparently higher than that of the unlisted ones.

The study indicates: resource factor lays the foundation for the sustainable development of commercial banks, with capability factor serving as the condition, and efficiency factor, which effectively integrates resources and capabilities, functioning as the core, and environmental factor providing important guarantee. Only through making overall plans and taking into consideration factors in the four aspects of resource, capability, efficiency and environment, can commercial banks boost sustainable development effectively. This dissertation put forwards that it is the inevitable course of achieving  sustainable  development  for  commercial  banks  to  perfect  corporate governance structure and internal control mechanism, to push forward comprehensive operation and multinational operation, to strengthen the coordinated balance between financial innovation and risk prevention and control, and meanwhile, to cultivate and improve financial ecological environment.

The innovation of this dissertation includes: firstly, it comprehensively analyzes factors that influence the sustainable development of commercial banks  in four dimensions that include resource, capability, efficiency and environment, and establishes the evaluation system of sustainable development for commercial banks that covers influencing factors of all types; secondly, apart from economic(financial)index, it also selects qualitative indexes and feature indexes including degree of policy support, degree of  customer  satisfaction  and  public  welfare  donation  index, striving  for  a  more comprehensive reflection of the coordinated development of commercial  banks and economy, society  and  environment  that  interact  with  one  another; thirdly, during  the process of screening indexes, it adopts the method that integrate clustering analysis and canonical analysis, thus not only downsizing the quantity of indexes but also avoiding the deviation between pure data calculation and practical situation; fourthly, it rates the sustainable development level of commercial banks according to the measured results, thus providing references for the longitudinal and crosswise comparison of commercial banks and policy making; fifthly, it adds the social responsibility factor to comparative analysis so as to quantize the social responsiblities that commercial banks fulfil and incorporate into the overall analytical framework, thus achieving a more prominent embodiment of the connotation of the sustainable development of commercial banks; sixthly, it conducts factor analysis of the data collected during three years, so as to achieve not only the annual ranking of the sustainable development level of different commercial banks but also the reflection of the dynamic changing process of sustainable development  level  of the  same  commercial  bank, thus  making  the  comparison  of sustainable development of commercial banks more comprehensive and systematic.

Read the article here:       【可持续发展】中国商业银行可持续发展研究.pdf