Move savings to a bank in China?

Hi all

There are a few government owned banks (e.g. ICBC) in China which make large profits and are considered some of the biggest banks in the world.

I am considering opening a deposit account in ICBC. I will transfer my money in Europe to this account.

I live in China so I can open a bank account here.

Do any of you have any advice (in particular, reasons not to do this) which I should know before doing this?

Thank you.

My understanding is the RMB is artificially devalued so they do not have a Switzerland-style inflated currency.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...china-banks-on-shockinghly-high-bad-debt.html

Better the devil you know.

I live in China so I can open a bank account here.

Click to expand...

Are there any restrictions on conversions of EUR to CNY? or is it easy to do this at your local Chinese bank?

Laramie said:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...china-banks-on-shockinghly-high-bad-debt.html

Better the devil you know.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link.

The reason I picked ICBC is because the government recently pumped billions into that bank to cover much of its bad debts.

CiaranT said:

Are there any restrictions on conversions of EUR to CNY? or is it easy to do this at your local Chinese bank?

Click to expand...

Apparently the way it works is sort of like this:

Your euro transfer gets held in a euro account rather than your CNY (kuai) account. When you then transfer the euros into your kuai account it gets converted to kuai using the day's exchange rate.

You want to invest in a bank with billions in bad debts?

We have a few here that could suit...

Yeah but the difference is China has a massive amount of money. They aren't a basket case like Ireland!