JINAN, June 3 (Xinhua) -- China encourages its small and medium-sized banks to introduce strategic investors from overseas in order to learn from advanced management ideas and techniques to improve their core competitiveness, top banking regulator said here Saturday.

    Addressing an annual national meeting on city commercial banks, Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), said China has already made important progress in introducing strategic overseas investment.

    To date, nine city commercial banks, including those in Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi'an, Jinan, Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanchong, Tianjin and Ningbo, have introduced strategic investment from overseas, according to the commission.

    Overseas investment accounts for about 5 percent of the overall equities of those city commeal banks, the commission said.

    The introduction of overseas investment contributed to marked improvement of those banks' corporate governing structures, management ideas and internal control as well as performance, said the chairman.

    By the end of last October, 19 overseas investors had become shareholders of 16 banks in China with their investment totaling 16.5 billion US dollars, or about 15 percent of the total capital of Chinese banks.

    The commission said 71 foreign banks from 20 countries or regions had set up 238 business branches with a total of 84.5 billion US dollars in financial assets in China.

    The figure accounts for about 2 percent of the total capital of the Chinese financial institutions. Enditem