Four major types of bonds are currently issued in the People's Republic of China: treasury bonds, policy bank financial bonds, special financial bonds, and corporate bonds.

Treasury bonds are debt instruments issued by the Ministry of Finance to raise funds for large development projects and to cover budget deficits.

Policy bank financial bonds are issued by the three policy banks: the China Development Bank, the Agricultural Development Bank of China, and the Export-Import Bank of China, as the primary source of their funding.

Special financial bonds are issued by financial institutions for refinancing debt. These issues require special approval from the People's Bank of China.

Corporate bonds are issued by state-owned enterprises or foreign joint venture enterprises to raise additional capital. New guidelines from the Chinese Security Regulatory Commission (CSRC) will allow corporations for the first time to issue bonds without bank guarantees. This could pave the way for private-sector domestic corporations to issue bonds.

Special features of each type of bond can be found at the links below.

On securitization

From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, there had been only a few PRC-related asset-backed securitization (ABS) deals - most of which were either cross-border or offshore issues.

In late 2005, the jointly issued Administrative Rules for the Pilot Securitization of Credit Assets by the People’s Bank of China (PBC) and China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) enabled asset securitization companies to take over non-performing assets from banks and public financial institutions. The two landmark pilot transactions launched at the end of 2005 were broadly classified as a Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO) and a Mortgage-Backed Security issuance.

Not technically considered as securitization activity, the “Specified Asset Management Plan” (SAMP) was also introduced to the PRC market in 2005 under an interim rule constituted by the CSRC. In this scheme, a securities firm establishes a SAMP to raise funds from investors and invests the proceeds in a specific, mostly corporate asset. The SAMP structure accomplishes the same goal as a securitization, where cash flows from the asset will be the only source of collateral for repayment of principal and interest to investors.