Bank Run in Henan Thwarted By Turning All Covid Passports Red

Sohu: 河南给储户赋红码限制挤兑背后：村镇银行和地方治理中的搭便车

First, roughly sort out the sequence of events in Henan. First, in May, there was a run on depositors in some village banks in Henan. Then, in the past few days, a new first-tier city and Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, gave red codes to some village bank depositors, which affected the normal life and travel of depositors. The most ridiculous thing is that a local from Henan who worked in Shenzhen was also given a red code.

Of course, this matter is absurd. After the hot search, I received a lot of scolding. Even Hu Xijin couldn't help but say it. He believes that the health code should not be used indiscriminately in social governance, because it not only violates the relevant epidemic prevention regulations, but also It will damage the credibility of the health code and affect the overall situation of epidemic prevention. Even Hu Xijin refused to wash the ground for this kind of thing, which shows that this thing is indeed absurd to a certain extent.

This matter is, of course, the problem of village banks.

Village banks have not been around for a long time, less than ten years ago. The earliest village banks in the country appeared in my hometown of Qingyang, and then they were widely spread across the country. The common problem of village banks is that the shareholding structure is very complex, and there are many stakeholders involved. Another problem is that the vast majority of banks are very small, the registration is basically only a few hundred million yuan, and the ability to resist risks is very low. With a little bit of trouble, there will be a crisis. Sometimes even personnel changes can bring crisis.

In fact, not only village banks, but also rural commercial banks at the county level restructured from the original rural credit cooperatives are in a similar situation. Especially in the underdeveloped areas of the central and western regions, the county-level rural commercial banks have very small plates, relatively small registered capital, and relatively low anti-risk capabilities. In 2019, the Rural Commercial Bank in Yichuan County, Henan Province experienced a large number of depositor runs due to personnel changes. Recently, in Henan, there have been a large number of runs on some villages and towns banks due to "storms".

These financial institutions at the county and township level were established during the economic upswing. If the economy continues to develop, the operation of these financial institutions will not be a big problem, but if the macroeconomic situation is unstable, it is difficult for these financial institutions to maintain normal operation, especially their own The regional characteristics of the economy are relatively obvious. Once some rumors appear, causing a large number of depositors to run, there will be a crisis. For large commercial banks, there may be very few problems of runs, but such small-scale financial institutions at the grass-roots level are still prone to this situation.