What lessons can China learn from the Japanese prolonged financial slump?

Abstract

China has been experiencing high economic growth along with massive change in its industrial structure. How will the industrial structure change affect the Chinese economy? Similar changes were observed by Japan, when the Japanese banking system fell into a structural failure in terms of the inability to respond to the paradigm shift from "catching up" to "frontier economy." This paper is undertaken to highlight the lessons that China can learn from Japan's prolonged financial slump. We point out that big cities in China have already shifted to frontier economy and major provinces are on the same trend. We argue that in spite of economic reform reshaping the Chinese banking system, the financing pattern of state owned commercial banks (SOCB) is not in line with the industrial change. The Chinese banking system should be overhauled or transformed to respond to the increasing uncertainty along with the paradigm shift. Otherwise, China may fall into the same dilemma that Japan had faced in its industrial structure change.