, if you went to your personal lawyer and overheard him refer to you in conversation with his associate as a “ counterparty, ” rather than as a “ client, ” would you worry? you should. my point here is not that banking is a profession like medicine or law. my point is about how you see your customer and the service provided to that customer. a counterparty is not someone needing your help ; “ it ” represents a profit opportunity – something to be exploited. their loss is your gain. a customer, by contrast, is someone to be served. it is right to charge a fee to a customer, client, or patient, but the transaction is driven by the other person ’ s needs. many financial services firms, however, refer to the people they do business with as counterparties. this is no accident. it characterizes the way in which the organization views the person it is facing in its businesses. viewing customers as profit opportunities is inconsistent with a strong ethical culture. in my experience, firms that consider their operational model as service provider tend to have a better culture than those firms that consider their operational model as money maker. the second item that i would leave out is a conception of a bank as a money making machine. this is not to say that i would ignore profitability ; that would be foolish and would destine a firm to a short life. but a bank ’ s goal should be to provide service to its customers through financial intermediation, as mark carney has explained so eloquently. 6 christine lagarde sees this as a cf. e. gerald corrigan, are banks special? federal reserve bank of minneapolis annual report, january 1983, ( “ [ t ] he presence of the public safety net uniquely available to a particular class of institutions also implies that those institutions have unique public responsibilities and may therefore be subject to implicit codes of conduct or explicit regulations that do not fall on other institutions. ” ). see thomas c. baxter, jr., reflections on the new compliance landscape, remarks at “ the new compliance landscape : increasing roles – increasing risks ” conference, july 24, 2014. see mark carney, “ inclusive capitalism : creating a sense of the systemic, ” address to the conference on inclusive capitalism, may 24, 2014. bis central bankers ’ speeches question of animating purpose – of “ telos ” – and i agree. 7 similarly, the archbishop of canterbury, justin welby, has called for financial institutions to

role in supporting the regional economic development. on this account, we need to make great efforts to promote reform of the local financial institutions and encourage social participation in the restructuring of these institutions so that new mechanisms featuring self - discipline and self - development could be fundamentally established to ensure healthy growth of financial business and strengthened financial services to regional economic development. in recent years, rural economic development has set higher standards for financial services. in particular in the west region where the agricultural industry accounts for a large proportion of the gdp, there exists an urgent need to improve financial services in the rural areas. the central government has been standing highly attentive to financial work in the rural area and on many different occasions stressed the need to “ introduce reform and innovation of the rural financial system ”. financial reform in the rural area shall be carried out in line with the local conditions focusing on exploring a new path for the development of rural finance. efforts shall be strengthened to construct a rural financial system with improved functions, rationalized division of labor, clear ownership and effective supervision, and to pioneer in developing new cooperative financial institutions in the rural area as well as an effective business model ensuring combined policy and commercial financial support to rural economic development. in 2003, pilot reform program of the rural credit cooperatives ( rccs ) was conducted in 8 provinces and municipalities. chongqing as one of the municipalities participating in the pilot program has so far made good progress in the reform, creating a sound foundation for future endeavors. with support of the government, the rccs have been released from financial burdens, but this does not mean we have completed the reform. whether we could make further progress in reforming the rccs depends critically on the transformation of the operating mechanisms and the financial sustainability of the rccs. success in these areas holds great significance not only for the viability and development of the rccs themselves, but also for the realization of the broad rural economic development strategy. with regard to supporting economic development in the west region and in the three gorges area, we think that financial support should be tilted towards the development of the small and medium - sized enterprises, particularly those non - public smes, and to the development of the external sector. as many have observed, in the government orchestrated reform process of the large commercial banks and the rccs, the large banks and some medium - sized banks tend to emphasize on their services to the large corporate clients, emphasize on restructuring the used - to - be loose credit management system, and emphasize on