In Fengtai District, Beijing, the owner of a condiment trading company has encountered a pleasant dilemma. The company is a core regional distributor for brands such as Haitian, Donggu, and Kawasaki, with steady business growth and expanding sales channels, yet it faces a shortage of manpower and tight daily working capital.
To expand, the company must first hire more staff, but its cash reserves cannot support this. In the same city, the head of an environmental technology company in Daxing District is also worried about money. The company provides waste sorting guidance, waste separation, and removal services for government departments, and must pay the salaries of over 200 employees on time each month, but customer payment cycles are irregular and sometimes drag on for months.
To solve this problem, early this year the central bank established a private enterprise relending facility under the agricultural and small business relending program, with a quota of 1 trillion yuan, guiding local legal-person financial institutions to further focus on key areas and increase support for private small and medium-sized enterprises, aiming to channel low-cost funds to financial institutions and ultimately deliver benefits to thousands of private enterprises.
But macro policies never land automatically. Once the policy gate opens, can the water truly flow into corporate accounts? In the first half of the year, the People's Bank of China Beijing Branch cumulatively disbursed 9.4 billion yuan in private enterprise relending, guiding the weighted average interest rate on newly issued small and micro enterprise loans in Beijing to drop to a low of 2.46% in June. Behind this is an entire policy transmission chain in operation, and countless enterprises like the aforementioned environmental technology company are the ultimate recipients at the end of this chain.
From "Afraid to Lend" to "Actively Seeking Clients"
Local legal-person financial institutions are on the front line of policy implementation and serve as the most important hub connecting relending funds with the local private real economy. Relying on its local service network, Beijing Rural Commercial Bank did not simply treat relending as a quota target, but instead adjusted its internal assessment mechanism and optimized its internal funds transfer pricing, forcing credit resources to tilt toward private small and medium-sized enterprises in technology, green, and agriculture-related fields, transforming low-cost central bank funds into credit products tailored to different corporate situations.
The aforementioned condiment regional distributor in Fengtai District is a beneficiary of the policy. The company has solid fundamentals, but business expansion requires hiring more staff, putting considerable pressure on its finances. After learning of the company's funding needs, Beijing Rural Commercial Bank, together with Beijing Capital Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd., immediately connected with the enterprise and formulated a dedicated credit service policy, extending a total of 9 million yuan in entrepreneurial guarantee loans to three small and micro enterprises under the actual controller's name. After enjoying fiscal interest subsidies, the actual interest rate borne by the client is 1.5%. The loan funds are mainly used to pay employee salaries, social insurance, and other daily operating expenses. The total number of social insurance contributors at the relevant enterprises increased from 10 to 16, and sales channels have steadily expanded.
The aforementioned Daxing environmental company also benefited. This private enterprise providing waste sorting outsourcing services was stuck at a funding bottleneck. It needed to pay the salaries of over 200 employees, but the government project payment approval process was lengthy, and the accounts could not be settled in time. As an asset-light service enterprise, the company had no factory buildings or land to use as collateral, and its working capital was becoming increasingly tight. Beijing Rural Commercial Bank, in conjunction with the small and micro enterprise financing coordination mechanism, learned through the district task force that the company had a periodic funding gap, actively connected with the person in charge, and ultimately provided a 3.5 million yuan low-cost working capital loan at an interest rate of 2.85%, easing the company's cash flow pressure and providing comprehensive financial services such as payroll agency services, helping the enterprise operate steadily and improve quality and efficiency.
The company's liquidity problem was resolved, salaries were paid on time, and the bank's supporting payroll agency services also helped the company streamline its internal financial processes. These two cases are precisely a microcosm of financial institutions supporting private small and medium-sized enterprises. Banks no longer focus solely on collateral, but have begun to understand orders, cash flow, and staffing needs. Under the guidance of central bank policy and the optimization of internal assessment mechanisms, the standards for evaluating account managers have changed, and the risk appetite of front-line staff has adjusted accordingly — from "afraid to lend" to "actively seeking clients." In the second quarter of 2026, the weighted average interest rate on newly issued private small and medium-sized enterprise loans at Beijing Rural Commercial Bank was 2.98%, down 21 basis points from the same period last year. This is not the result of administrative orders, but a commercial choice naturally formed after internal mechanism reform.
Breaking Through the "Sandwich Layer"
If the condiment distributor and the environmental company represent the traditional financing challenges of small and micro enterprises, then the case of Gengtu Technology in Haidian District touches on a previous structural problem — the financing dilemma of private medium-sized enterprises. For a long time, there has been a fault line in the financing environment for Chinese private enterprises: large private enterprises have diverse financing channels, small and micro enterprises have access to numerous targeted support programs, while private medium-sized enterprises in the middle ground neither have the credit endorsement of large enterprises nor meet the policy thresholds for small and micro enterprises. The industry calls this the "sandwich layer."
One of the most important changes in the central bank's 1 trillion yuan relending facility this time is that it included private medium-sized enterprises in the support scope for the first time. Gengtu Technology is a typical representative of such enterprises. The company focuses on cutting-edge technology research and development and industrialization, with independent intellectual property rights and core technological advantages. At the same time, however, long R&D cycles, high upfront investment, and few fixed assets available for collateral often keep such enterprises locked out of loans. Beijing Rural Commercial Bank, incentivized by the relending policy, adjusted its risk appetite, formed a dedicated team to conduct on-site research, focusing on R&D investment, project planning, and actual cash flow conditions, simplified credit approval, and ultimately extended a 10 million yuan unsecured credit loan explicitly designated for new technology research and development and equipment upgrades.
"The landing of this loan cannot be separated from policy guidance," said an industry insider. When the central bank's low-cost funds change banks' funding costs and internal assessment logic, banks have both the ability and the willingness to cover customer groups they previously "did not dare to touch." Gengtu Technology is not an isolated case. As of the end of June, the balance of private small and medium-sized enterprise loans at local legal-person institutions supported by relending in the Beijing area increased by 7.5% year-on-year, 1.1 percentage points higher than the average level of the entire jurisdiction.
The "Parent-Subsidiary Bank Collaboration" Model: An Alternative Solution
Beijing Rural Commercial Bank represents mechanism innovation along the traditional path, while China CITIC Baixin Bank offers a completely different solution. China CITIC Baixin Bank is a digital bank with no physical branches. Its core product "Business Loan" targets growth-stage private small and micro enterprises with credit lines of 500,000 to 5 million yuan — often long-tail customers that are scattered, have high-frequency needs, and are too costly for traditional banks to conduct due diligence on one by one. The bank comprehensively uses data from tax, invoices, transactions, cash flow, and credit reporting to build a dynamic assessment model. Customers apply online, with the entire process completed in an average of 3 minutes, and the data foundation has nearly 5,000 real-time feature variables online. For enterprises with complex businesses, digital risk control is complemented by expert manual review, balancing lending efficiency with risk control.
This system extends to bidding and distribution industry chain scenarios, giving a large number of small and micro enterprises lacking collateral and without core enterprise guarantees access to financing opportunities. However, digitalization can improve approval efficiency but can hardly expand customer sources. What truly enables China CITIC Baixin Bank to develop distinctive features in the relending policy is its "parent-subsidiary bank collaboration" model with its parent bank, China CITIC Bank. Among them, the parent bank China CITIC Bank, leveraging its nationwide network of branches and account manager teams, identifies private small and micro enterprises with financing needs from existing settlement customers and industrial clusters, and handles customer connection and local account services, while Baixin Bank leverages its online advantages to handle pre-screening, credit approval, and disbursement. The entire process forms a closed loop of "CITIC screens and recommends, Baixin independently approves, CITIC accounts receive, and both parties collaborate on management." Beyond credit, it can also connect payment settlement, wealth management, and other comprehensive services, upgrading from one-time lending to financial companionship that grows with the enterprise.
Currently, this "parent-subsidiary bank collaboration" model has been implemented in multiple branches of China CITIC Bank. On May 22, 2026, upon recommendation by the Xi'an Branch of China CITIC Bank, China CITIC Baixin Bank processed a 2 million yuan unsecured loan for a technology company in Shaanxi on the same day; in collaboration with the Guangzhou Branch of China CITIC Bank, it issued a 3 million yuan unsecured loan to an information technology company in Guangzhou; and in collaboration with the Nanjing Branch of China CITIC Bank, it issued a 3 million yuan unsecured loan to a chemical technology company in Jiangsu. As of the end of July 2026, this model has reached nearly 3,000 enterprises cumulatively, with credit approvals totaling 400 million yuan and actual disbursements of 290 million yuan.
"This is a combined punch," China CITIC Baixin Bank explained. Relying on the support and guidance of private enterprise relending funds, it further expands credit supply to growth-stage private small and micro enterprises, reduces corporate financing costs, and enhances the precision and directness of policy fund deployment. Digital tools and the "parent-subsidiary bank collaboration" model extend the reach of policy services, allowing private small and micro enterprises as far away as Xi'an, Guangzhou, and Nanjing to equally share in policy dividends.
From Central Bank Policy to Corporate Ledgers
The logic of relending is not difficult to understand: the central bank provides cheap funds to banks, guiding them to lend to key areas and weak links, and enterprises receive loans. But reality is far more complex than this simple logic. "The biggest test of policy tools is that once the transmission chain is blocked, low-cost funds cannot reach the private small and medium-sized enterprises that truly need them. Beijing's practice precisely demonstrates this long chain in its entirety," commented an industry expert.
"The relending quota is not allocated arbitrarily," an industry insider told reporters. The People's Bank of China will survey institutional credit deployment in advance, estimate potential demand, and simultaneously improve systems, simplify procedures, and promote online processing. This step addresses the bottleneck of "banks being slow to obtain policy funds and facing cumbersome procedures." At the same time, relying on an incentive-compatible quota allocation mechanism, policy guidance is embedded into quota allocation rules, guiding local legal-person institutions to be willing to direct funds to private small and medium-sized enterprises rather than to lower-risk large corporate businesses.
But for banks, obtaining low-cost central bank funds does not mean front-line account managers are willing to lend to private small and micro enterprises. If internal bank assessments still favor heavy collateral and large-scale projects, relending quotas may sit idle. In response, Beijing Rural Commercial Bank adjusted its assessment standards and optimized internal funds transfer pricing, converting external policy incentives into internal business momentum. China CITIC Baixin Bank optimized its business processes, using the "parent-subsidiary bank collaboration" model to transform the entire chain of customer acquisition, approval, and disbursement. Internal mechanism reform is the key to preventing policy dividends from being intercepted within banks.
This process cannot be separated from systematic coordination. Ultimately, financial institutions break free from traditional credit inertia, no longer blindly worship factory and land collateral, and learn to understand invoices, cash flow, R&D capabilities, orders, and industry scenarios. The Beijing environmental technology enterprise, the Fengtai trading distributor, Gengtu Technology, and the technology companies in Xi'an, Guangzhou, and other places that received loans from Baixin Bank are all concrete examples of this link. Approval speeds up, quotas are in place, and policy dividends ultimately manifest in every loan contract an enterprise signs.
For the Fengtai condiment distributor, after the loan arrived, the company hired new employees and channels are expanding; for the head of the Daxing environmental company, the monthly salaries of over 200 employees no longer need to be scrambled for; for the founder of Gengtu Technology, the 10 million yuan is being transformed into technical blueprints for the next generation of products. When the central bank's policy dividends pass through multiple gates — quota allocation, internal assessment, risk pricing, and approval disbursement — and finally reach corporate accounts, interest rates have dropped, processes have sped up, and the "sandwich layer" previously shut out is now included in the service scope.
"Next, the People's Bank of China Beijing Branch will continue to implement the moderately accommodative monetary policy in detail, make good use of private enterprise relending and other structural monetary policy tools, guide financial institutions to continuously increase support for private small and medium-sized enterprises, and promote the healthy development of the capital's private economy," a relevant business head of the People's Bank of China Beijing Branch told reporters.