China's city commercial bank were created during the 1990's by city governments through the active merging and restructuring of China's 5 000 or more urban credit cooperatives to resolve a number of issues that had developed within the sector.
The first city commercial bank to be established was Shenzhen City Commercial Bank in 1995.
By the end of 1998, the initial wave of restructuring had created 88 city commercial banks, leaving 3 240 urban credit cooperatives.
Since then still more city commercial banks have been formed, so that today the number stands at city commercial banks and around 2300 urban credit cooperatives.