How Does China Build Its Fintech Strategy? A Perspective of Policy Evolution

Abstract

Understanding the layout of China’s fintech policy planning from the perspective of policy science theory will help policy makers to fully understand the current development stage and evolutionary path of fintech and improve the implementation of fintech policies and the promotion of their effects. This study examines 120 fintech policies issued at the national level from 2017 to 2022; unifies policy tools, policy organizational structure, and policy effectiveness into a three-dimensional scientific policy analysis framework; and uses a text content mining method to provide a quantitative analysis of China’s current fintech policy system. In terms of the choice of policy tools, there is an unbalanced proportion, with environmental-type policy tools being overused and demand-type policy tools being underused; a network of core institutions for policy promulgation has been formed, with diversified types of subjects. However, overall, the degree of cooperation among various subjects is not high, and some departments closely related to the development of fintech are not involved enough in the publication of cooperation documents. Policy effectiveness depends on the number of policies and their average effectiveness, and the latter has insufficient growth momentum. Given the existing problems, some suggestions are made for optimising policies to develop fintech.