In the current era of profound transformation in the banking industry, with a volatile macroeconomic environment, declining market interest rates, and accelerating financial supply-side reforms, major banks face the critical challenge of balancing stability and innovation while maintaining competitiveness. Against this backdrop, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC), as the world's largest commercial bank by assets, has garnered significant attention for its performance and strategic choices that reflect both the strategic determination and responsibility of state-owned major banks.

**Steady Progress with Strong Fundamentals**

ICBC's development philosophy centers on stability. Amid global financial uncertainties, the bank demonstrates substantial scale, strong vitality, and continuous innovation capacity, serving as a cornerstone of China's financial system.

According to ICBC's 2025 interim report, the bank achieved operating revenue of 427.1 billion yuan during the reporting period, representing a year-on-year increase of 1.57%. Net profit reached 168.1 billion yuan, while total group assets stood at 52.32 trillion yuan, up 7.2% from the end of the previous year. Customer deposits totaled 36.90 trillion yuan, growing 5.9% year-on-year, and total loans reached 30.19 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.4%.

Achieving stable growth on such a massive scale demonstrates robust operations and long-term strategic determination. This performance is particularly significant given the continued profit concessions to the real economy and the deepening development of inclusive finance.

Notably, ICBC maintained balanced growth in assets and liabilities during the reporting period, with enhanced development resilience. While maintaining industry-leading positions in assets, customer loans, and deposits, the bank achieved an annualized average return on total assets of 0.67% and an annualized weighted average return on equity of 8.82%. The non-performing loan ratio decreased by 0.01 percentage point to 1.33%, while the capital adequacy ratio increased by 0.15 percentage point to 19.54%, and the provision coverage ratio rose by 2.80 percentage points to 217.71%, further solidifying the foundation for prudent operations.

This comprehensive strength has gained recognition from international authorities. On July 2, 2025, The Banker magazine published its Global 1000 Banks ranking, with ICBC topping the list for the 13th consecutive year with Tier 1 capital of $541 billion. This achievement not only consolidates ICBC's leading position in the global banking industry but also demonstrates international recognition of its substantial capital base and capabilities in global development and real economy services.

Additionally, Euromoney magazine recently announced its "2025 Awards for Excellence" results, with ICBC winning the "Best Large Corporate Bank in China" award for its outstanding performance in corporate finance. This recognition reflects the bank's continuous improvement in systematization, specialization, digitalization, and ecosystem development of corporate financial services.

ICBC has also excelled in domestic inclusive finance. The China Finance magazine recently announced the results of the Seventh Annual Outstanding Brand Case Awards in the financial industry, with ICBC's "Agricultural Matchmaking" platform case winning the Annual Inclusive Finance Case Award. Since its launch in September 2021, this exclusive service platform, jointly developed with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, has supported over 1,800 projects, served 480,000 agricultural business entities, and provided nearly 270 billion yuan in intended financing support.

The bank's scale and structure provide considerable breadth in service scope and customer base. By the end of 2024, ICBC had provided financial products and services to over 14 million corporate customers globally while serving more than 700 million individual customers. This nationwide coverage and global connectivity make ICBC not just a bank, but a financial "artery" for the national economy.

**Focusing on Real Economy Development**

Serving the real economy remains ICBC's fundamental mission and core commitment. As a state-owned major bank, ICBC consistently aligns with overall economic development, precisely directing financial resources to key areas of economic and social development, nourishing new quality productive forces with financial "living water," and promoting industrial upgrading and coordinated regional development.

Against the backdrop of accelerated new industrialization, ICBC prioritizes manufacturing as the focus of financial support. As of the end of June 2025, ICBC's manufacturing loan balance became the first to exceed 5 trillion yuan, ranking first among peers. This reflects a more reasonable loan structure with continuously increasing medium- and long-term loan proportions, covering key industrial chain segments including high-end equipment, intelligent manufacturing, and green manufacturing, actively supporting enterprise equipment upgrades and technological transformation.

In supporting manufacturing enterprises, ICBC matches loan terms flexibly to enterprise needs. For example, the bank extended medium- and long-term working capital loan terms to three years for Beijing Tongrentang, precisely matching the capital needs of the company's complex processes and longer production cycles.

In new quality productive forces, technological innovation serves as the core driver. ICBC comprehensively increases financial supply to technology companies following principles of investing early, small, long-term, and in hard technologies. As of the end of June 2025, its technology loan balance exceeded 6 trillion yuan, growing 20% from the end of 2024.

To address financing difficulties for technology companies, ICBC continuously develops innovative credit products, especially those "tailor-made" for light-asset, high-R&D technology companies. "ICBC's high efficiency, low rates, and convenient procedures with flexible borrowing and repayment bring financing convenience to technology enterprises," noted a responsible person from a national high-tech enterprise that obtained loans from ICBC's Xiaoshan Branch in Zhejiang.

Beyond high-tech enterprises, ICBC emphasizes continuous financial support for small and micro enterprises. The "Loan Information Sheet" represents ICBC's innovative approach to transparently showing comprehensive financing costs for enterprise loans, allowing small and micro enterprises to see, calculate, and compare clearly, significantly reducing hidden costs in the financing chain.

**Leading Innovation and Future Development**

While strengthening foundations and focusing on the real economy, ICBC takes a forward-looking approach, comprehensively advancing internationalization, digitalization, and green development to build future-oriented high-quality growth drivers.

In the new historical period, ICBC is not satisfied with merely "getting bigger" but focuses more on "getting stronger" and "getting better." How to consolidate its leading position in the global financial landscape and achieve sustainable development under green and inclusive trends has become core to ICBC's high-quality development.

As the world's largest commercial bank by assets, ICBC continues making new strides in internationalization. By the end of 2024, ICBC's overseas institutions covered 49 countries and regions, with business radiating to major global economies and emerging markets. Through digital cross-border financial products, the bank effectively reduces settlement costs for small and micro foreign trade enterprises, helping them easily explore overseas markets.

Whether supporting manufacturing equipment upgrades, patent pledge financing for technology companies, reducing refinancing costs for small and micro enterprises, or matchmaking agricultural business entities, ICBC allocates financial resources to key areas driving high-quality economic development.

ICBC strives to provide comprehensive support for Chinese enterprises "going global" while offering convenience to global customers through RMB internationalization business. With its extensive cross-border clearing network and comprehensive service capabilities, the bank achieves steady growth in overseas business profit contribution, making international business an important pillar of diversified revenue for many years.

Furthermore, ICBC continues promoting green finance development, continuously improving the "green content" of financial services to comprehensively serve Beautiful China construction. Currently, ICBC's green loan portfolio exceeds 6 trillion yuan, with cumulative domestic issuance of over 110 billion yuan in RMB green financial bonds and over $20 billion in overseas green financial bonds, maintaining industry-leading green investment and financing scale.

In practice, ICBC innovatively launches products such as "Beautiful Village Loans," "Green Waters and Mountains Loans," and carbon reduction-linked loans to support rural environmental improvement, ecological development, and green energy projects. For example, in Qingyuan County, Zhejiang, ICBC provided 200 million yuan in financing for National Reserve Forest projects, which not only represents green finance practice but also precise implementation serving rural revitalization and "dual carbon" goals, effectively driving wood processing and understory economy development, truly transforming "green waters and mountains" into "gold and silver mountains."

ICBC's high-quality development relies on strong strategic determination. In recent years, the bank has persistently pursued innovative development paths, using intelligent risk control, digital momentum, modern layout, diversified structure, and ecosystem foundation as five major supports to continuously build major bank advantages for the new era.

ICBC is leveraging prudent risk management, substantial capital strength, leading international presence, and continuous innovation drive to advance from being the "world's largest" to becoming the "world's strongest." From supporting "Manufacturing Power" to building "Financial Power," ICBC is using concrete financial actions to support the financial blueprint of Chinese-style modernization.