China’s U-Turn on Fintech Firms Hasn’t Slowed Them Down
But state-owned banks still have more control than it seems.
WeChat Pay, Alipay and UnionPay signs in a store in Suzhou. Credit: Shwangtianyuan, Creative Commons
For a brief window from 2013 to 2016, China’s government encouraged its private tech firms to enter finance and take on outdated state-owned banks. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), one of the world’s largest central banks, bet that competition would force incumbents to modernize. That opening led to a golden age of financial innovation — and what could be the world’s largest initial public offering.
On Tuesday [Aug 25], Ant Group, the financial technology, or “fintech,” giant
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