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Im moving to Chengdu with my family next week & was wanting to open a Chinese bank acc to transfer money into. Is it a hard process? What forms are needed? What banks are recomended?
Hi there,
You’ll be happy to know that it’s very easy. All you need is your passport and about 100 yuan to open an account.
I don’t know too much about which banks are preferable so I’ll leave that to someone else to answer. I use China Merchants Bank (招商银行) and it works pretty well for me.
Man, just be careful with the card. I got one here, a visa debit card, asked them will it work in peru, ecuador and colombia? no problem, they said, its visa card. didnt work in any of these countries….useless…
@kuma was there anything special you had to do to get the Visa card? I haven’t been able to get a Visa debit card for any of the Chinese bank accounts that I’ve had here (they’re all Unionpay, it seems).
Bank of China is usually considered a pretty poor choice, while Merchants and Construction pretty good.
Great, thanks for the replies. Opened an acc with the Bank of China. Took 10mins & 20RMB. My Mandarin is a bit average but the guy spoke English so it was quite simple.
Despite living in China on and off for the past 3 years I have neglected to open a bank account. For a while I enjoyed the novelty of keeping large sums of cash in my bedroom. Perhaps it was nostalgia for bygone days as a crazed scarface Raver kid.
What has really kept me at bay over the years were the nefarious investment policies of Bank of China ICBC and CCB respectively.
In terms of social and environmental responsibility, Fujian-based Industrial Bank of China (IBC) is an outlier when it comes to recognizing the need for environmental protection and fiscal transparency. Checkout BankTrack.org they also have reports for aforementioned banks and have links to document IBC’s recognition of the the Equator Principles.
http://www.banktrack.org/show/bankprofiles/industrial_bank
The downside is that IBC lags behind its competitors in terms of convenience in Chengdu. There are only a handful of branches in the city and a small scattering of ATMs. However they recently opened a new office on 人民南路 just north of the Western tower. I think I’m going to open an account soon, sure its a little far from my house, but I’d rather “put my money where my mouth is”.
In other news, lets hope that the recent IMF sex-scandal will force them to turn over a new leaf and put an end to the rape of third world economies…
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