This is the eighth annual report on China's MSME finance development, produced by a team led by Shi Jianping and Yang Rubing of the Central University of Finance and Economics.

The report provides a comprehensive review on the development of the so-called Micro and Small Finance (MSF) market in China, meaning credit services to Small and Micro Enterprises (MSEs), unincorporated but registered urban businesses and MSE owners. As the Chinese Medium Enterprises are relatively large, this definition corresponds more or less to the international understanding of MSME finance. A major trend has been the significant heating up of the Chinese market due to a number of factors, e.g., lowering of the entry barriers, deeper down-scaling by large banks, emergence of on-line lending and data-driven lending, development of credit reporting services, etc.

This year, the core team set higher requirements on depth of study on the basis of continuously upholding the principle of "objective, neutral and precise".
The commercial bank team carried out the fourth Questionnaire Survey of MSE Financial Managers in Commercial Banks, the number of managers climbed year by year, while regional coverage also enlarged. The rural finance team stepped deep into poor villages and managed to form a more profound understanding of the pain points of rural finance. Particularly, the stock market team and bond market team for the first time tried classifying enterprises in the two markets, in an effort to show the real situation of big-medium-small-micro enterprises financing from capital market, and further objectively demonstrate the changes the development of multi-level capital market had brought about.
Though, to some extent, boring, tough, and in need of considerable patience, we did address such basic work as how the worth of our report stood out, utilizing fact and data to show the real situation of China MSME finance and seek broader consensus.