"Chinese banks rise to claim top spot among largest lenders to “forest-risk” businesses" Global Witness, 29 May 2025

Chinese banks became the largest creditors of “forest-risk” companies globally between 2018-2024 [...] according to a new analysis by Global Witness, based on data released in September 2024 by the Forests & Finance coalition.

The Forests & Finance database [...] tracks financial flows to over 300 “forest-risk” companies involved in agricultural supply chains such as beef, palm oil and soy production – industries that are major drivers of tropical deforestation.

According to the data, between 2018-2024, Chinese banks provided a total of $23 billion in credit to “forest-risk” companies.

There are a handful of key Chinese banks among the top creditors providing “forest-risk” financing – CITIC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China were the top three creditors between 2018-2024, according to the data.

The two biggest “forest-risk” recipients of this Chinese bank lending are Sinochem and Royal Golden Eagle Group (RGE) [...].

COFCO, a major Chinese agricultural trader, is the third-largest recipient.

The rising influence of Chinese banks in “forest-risk” sectors is of particular concern given that Chinese banks persistently have some of the weakest deforestation policies in place compared with banks from other countries.

One way of comparing the strength of banks’ policies on deforestation is via the Forest 500 [...] which ranks financial institutions based on an evaluation of their publicly available commitments to tackle deforestation and related human rights abuses [...].

Four out of six major Chinese lenders (including CITIC, Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) assessed in Forest 500’s database have policy scores of zero.

Global Witness approached Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and CITIC with an opportunity to comment on the report’s findings – including their financing activities and apparent lack of deforestation policies. None of the three banks responded to this request.

Despite being one of the world’s largest markets for “forest-risk” commodities [...] China currently lacks a national policy prohibiting the import of commodities linked to deforestation.

Global Witness’ analysis suggests that Chinese banks and their regulators can do much more to reverse the environmental and social harm caused by financing deforestation-linked companies [...].