The Cross-Border Financial Attraction Network Behind the Perspective of Bank of China's Financial Report

Against the backdrop of persistently low interest rates and normalized asset shortages, the pricing logic of the capital markets for large banks is undergoing a restructuring. Traditional scale expansion is giving way to structural resilience against cycles and the ability to monetize services aligned with macro strategies.

Focusing on China Bank’s financial report, this trend is confirmed by data—

In 2025, China Bank achieved a structural breakout in non-interest income beneath the surface of 257.94B yuan in net profit and a 2.06% year-over-year growth: the full-year related income reached 44.5k yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.12%, accounting for 33.06% of total revenue, up 4.31 percentage points from the previous year.

Thus, China Bank has become thefastest-growingandhighest proportionamong theBig Four Banksinnon-interest income.

In an industry characterized by narrowing interest margins, this high-growth report is no longer just a defensive tool but a touchstone for testing the effectiveness of the big banks’ light-capital transformation. Its essence has transcended simple business expansion, moving toward deep strategic resonance.

Dissecting this incremental structure of over 210 billion yuan, the core points to China Bank’s global network and cross-border business:

In 2025, profits from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas regions grew by 5.11% and 12.86%, respectively, with the overseas footprint contributing 27.99% to the group’s profits.

China Bank President Zhang Hui stated at the earnings release that globalization is China Bank’s inherent gene and a century-old operational foundation, as well as its greatest differentiated development advantage compared to other Chinese-funded banks, providing strong support for the bank’s operational performance.

Behind the cross-national profit migration is the massive flow and distribution of funds in the physical world.

In 2025, China Bank’s international settlement volume reached $4.45 trillion, cross-border RMB settlement hit 17.70 trillion yuan, with market shares leading among peers. Its leading position in trade finance, guarantees, and other traditional strengths has also been consolidated.

Such a huge volume of cross-border funds requires circulation, pricing, and sedimentation—none of which can be achieved without a super hub, the construction of an international financial center.

Peering through financial indicators, a key underlying thread behind the explosive growth of China Bank’s non-interest income becomes clear—deep integration with the construction of international financial centers.

As Shanghai and Hong Kong become the core nodes linking China to global resources, China Bank is transforming the hub potential of these international financial centers into tangible profit growth on its financial statements through meticulous restructuring of assets and liabilities.

The Attractiveness of Shanghai-Hong Kong Synergy

The strong surge in non-interest income is driven by the deep collaboration between Shanghai and Hong Kong, two major international financial centers.

Refined management of liabilities has built the bottom line of the bank’s cycle defense; meanwhile, the capital distribution and pricing capabilities of these financial centers effectively broaden the business ceiling of the light-capital transformation.

As twin stars of China’s financial landscape open to the world, Shanghai and Hong Kong play distinctly different but highly complementary roles—Shanghai as the gateway radiating China’s vast domestic assets outward, and Hong Kong as the largest offshore RMB liquidity pool globally.

Within this massive capital arena, China Bank has moved beyond mere participation to become a builder of foundational financial infrastructure.

This role shift aligns with top-level management’s strategic design. Zhang Hui emphasized, “Playing a leading role in promoting RMB internationalization and supporting the construction of Shanghai and Hong Kong as international financial centers.”

The most direct leverage point is the bond market.

In 2025, China Bank maintained its top position in the interbank Panda bond underwriting market for twelve consecutive years with an underwriting scale of nearly 38 billion yuan; offshore RMB bonds (Dim Sum bonds) underwrote over 110 billion yuan, ranking first in the market for three consecutive years.

In August of the same year, China Bank assisted Bank of Communications’ Hong Kong branch in successfully issuing the world’s first public-offering free trade offshore bond (Pearl Bond).

This 200 million yuan deal, seemingly insignificant amid the massive figures in the financial report, marks a profound institutional breakthrough—

It essentially opened a channel for overseas entities to rely on Shanghai for bond issuance and financing, directly connecting Shanghai’s pricing to global funds. China Bank is the core market maker on this pricing channel.

Once this pricing channel is established, the possibility of massive fund flows becomes feasible, and the synergy between Shanghai and Hong Kong is expected to be amplified exponentially. Business logic will deepen from simple bond issuance into more fundamental clearing processes.

As the sole RMB clearing bank in Hong Kong, Bank of China Hong Kong maintains its dominant role in offshore market clearing.

Leveraging its enormous fund volume, Bank of China Hong Kong has made a key leap: it officially became the first foreign clearing member of the Shanghai Clearing House, greatly reducing cross-border transaction barriers.

Previously, foreign institutions involved in domestic derivatives faced cumbersome cross-border settlement hurdles; now, through Bank of China Hong Kong as a bridge, foreign funds can directly conduct RMB interest rate swaps, forward bonds, and other complex derivatives in the interbank market with high efficiency.

This is not only a lucrative non-interest income business for China Bank but also a historic connection of China’s financial infrastructure.

In essence, China Bank has securely channeled Hong Kong’s liquidity into Shanghai’s clearing system, enlarging its own fee pie while solidifying Shanghai’s hub position in the global financial system.

Rebuilding the Underlying Infrastructure

The radiance of an international financial center depends on the capacity of its underlying financial system. Without clearing and account infrastructure, global resource allocation remains on paper.

In today’s intensified global financial competition, controlling the underlying channels of cross-border clearing and pricing is fundamentally related to national macro-strategic security and financial discourse power;

For China Bank, deeply embedding into this national-level financial infrastructure is both a strategic responsibility and a core logic for accumulating massive low-cost funds and boosting intermediary business revenue.

Specifically, China Bank’s reconstruction of the underlying infrastructure unfolds along two main lines:

One is advancing account systems and foreign exchange settlement facilitation in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone;

The other is leveraging Hong Kong as a hub to expand global clearing and custody networks.

In Shanghai’s international financial center, China Bank has seized the first-mover advantage in the Free Trade Zone, implementing nearly 70 first-in-the-world financial innovations;

From pioneering “7*24 hours direct credit” for instant cross-border remittances, to supporting Shanghai’s “reinsurance” international board and providing account services to over half of the resident institutions, China Bank rapidly transforms institutional policy dividends into business barriers.

Currently, it covers over 80% of multinational corporate regional headquarters and Fortune 500 foreign-invested clients in Shanghai.

Turning to offshore markets, China Bank’s infrastructure network in Hong Kong and globally also creates a strong competitive edge.

As Hong Kong’s only RMB business clearing bank and the only Chinese bank offering London Clearing House and OTC derivatives agency clearing services, Bank of China Hong Kong acts as a super connector for offshore fund flows.

Building on this, China Bank established the first Chinese-funded global custodian bank. By the end of 2025, its global custody assets reached about 5 trillion yuan, with a custody network covering over 100 countries and regions, maintaining the top position among Chinese peers.

In key facilities promoting cross-border two-way flow of financial elements, China Bank has secured a strategic position by expanding its CIPS network.

By the end of 2025, China Bank had 46 direct participants in CIPS, holding 16 seats as a RMB clearing bank designated by the People’s Bank of China, further expanding to 18 seats by March 2026, maintaining industry-leading network coverage.

Peering into the industry ecosystem

The flow of financial capital and the construction of financial centers ultimately depend on the leap of the real economy. Evaluating the substantive contribution of a large financial institution to international financial center development hinges on whether its capital deployment aligns with the city’s core competitiveness transformation.

In Shanghai’s strategic layout, China Bank’s capital deployment precisely anchors on two core areas: technological innovation and shipping upgrade.

Facing the key track of artificial intelligence, China Bank has clarified specific business pathways:

Over the next five years, China Bank’s head office plans to provide 1 trillion yuan in comprehensive financial support for the entire AI industry chain; among them, the Shanghai branch alone will invest no less than 100 billion yuan.

Precise capital delivery essentially reflects China Bank’s deep integration of Shanghai’s sci-tech innovation and financial centers’ coordinated development.

Regarding this cross-sector synergy empowering the real economy, Zhang Hui pointed out that China Bank will continuously improve and innovate institutional mechanisms to promote the deep integration of globalization advantages, comprehensive features, and fintech development.

In enhancing Shanghai’s international shipping hub capacity, China Bank has demonstrated cross-sector resource integration capabilities.

On one hand, it collaborates with PICC to launch action plans, introducing ten specific measures in shipping safety, trade facilitation, and green transformation to smooth shipping cycle tail risks through bank-insurance collaboration;

On the other hand, it led the formulation of the “International Shipping Management Free Trade Account Service Scheme,” establishing an internationally aligned cross-border system for ship management companies, providing substantial financial supply to unblock funding bottlenecks in the shipping industry chain.

Looking southward, in Hong Kong, as a global offshore hub, China Bank’s industry penetration is most evident in its deep support for Chinese entities’ “going global” efforts.

Relying on China Bank Hong Kong’s regional reach, it connects cross-border syndicates, foreign exchange hedging, and global liquidity pooling, providing comprehensive capital support for outbound industries like new energy and high-end manufacturing;

By exporting internationally aligned green finance and ESG standards, it substantially broadens China’s real economy’s strategic depth in participating in global competition and resource allocation.

This deep integration of financial infrastructure with the real economy in cross-border operations ultimately completes a profit cycle—177k yuan in non-interest income, not just a dry financial indicator but a map of a global financial network centered on Shanghai and Hong Kong, utilizing cross-border clearing as a conduit and institutional innovation as nodes.

Today, China Bank is transforming national strategic momentum into its own high-quality development engine and differentiated competitive advantage. High-level openness-driven profit revaluation has become its anchor for cycle resilience and navigating complex markets.

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