Microfinance In China
Published by Jerry Ostradicky, | 21 Aug 2008 at 11:27 pm
With the spotlight on China with the 2008 Olympics Games, I naturally started to look at how China is doing in the microfinance sector. However, to my surprise, there was actually very little information about microfinance in China. I scoured the internet for hours, and could only find a handful of sites that had anything relevant. So, I thought I would highlight some of my findings:
I was expecting there to be a lot more, but I was only able to find the following MFIs in China:
- ARDPAS - Association for Rural Development of Poor Areas in Sichuan
- CFPA - China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation
- CZWSDA - Chifeng Zhaowuda Women’s Sustainable Development Association
- OI China - Opportunity International China
- PATRA Hunchun
- PATRA Yanbian
Most of the articles I found were fairly old, so I here is a list of some of the more recent articles:
- Microfinance in China: Micro vs. Mandarin
- History of Microcredit in China
- Social entrepreneurship in Sichuan: Interview with Meg Young of Ecologia, a sustainable development program
- China Life Insurance Company Limited Introduces Microinsurance Products in Nine Provinces
- Sustainable Development in China
- What Microfinance Means for China’s Growth
- Microfinance Institutions To Debut In China’s Zhejiang Province
-Wokai
Wokai is a “capital-contributing microfinance intermediary in the China microfinance field.” They have good information on the site, and they have a great blog that talks a lot about microfinance in China. Definitely a great place to start if you are looking for info about China.
-Mix Market
“The MIX MARKET ™ provides information to sector actors and the public at large on microfinance institutions (MFIs) worldwide, public and private funds that invest in microfinance, MFI networks, raters/external evaluators, advisory firms, and governmental and regulatory agencies.” The Mix Market is very useful if you want to dig deeper into specific organizations and countries.
-China Asociation of Microfinance (CAM)
Although the website is a little hard to navigate, CAM has a lot of current events and news feeds about microfinance associations in China.
Like I said earlier, I wasn’t able to find very much information pertaining to microfinance in China. If anybody has any other good websites with relevant information, please let me know.
Leslie Forman on 24 Aug 2008 at 10:01 pm #
Thanks Jerry for compiling these links in one place! I found the Meg Young interview especially interesting. We at Wokai are creating a “learn” section as part of our new lending website that will contain links to all of the latest China microfinance news. China’s financial regulatory structures make microfinance more challenging there than in some other countries. The Grameen Foundation and Citibank have been great supporters of microfinance in China.
Nick Sowden on 08 Sep 2008 at 7:15 pm #
A lecture given by a microfinance professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Leeds School of Business recently addressed the phenomenon on very few MFIs in China. One of the largest problems faced by MFIs have been property laws setting back entrepreneurs.
One horror story was told of an orchard that took years to mature. Upon maturation and the first full harvest of fruit, the local government seized the property claiming the local entrepreneur had to right to the land.
With a few key policy changes, I think China would be ripe for microfinance and other BoP projects to be really successful.