About China Chengxin International Credit Rating

China Chengxin International Credit Rating

China Chengxin International Credit Rating Co., Ltd. (CCXI) is the flagship rating company of the China Chengxin Credit Rating Group and is widely described as China's largest domestic credit rating agency. The group was founded in Beijing on 8 October 1992 as China's first nationwide credit rating company, approved by the People's Bank of China and chaired by economist Mao Zhenhua. CCXI itself was created in August 1999 as China's first credit-rating joint venture, originally with Fitch Ratings and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as partners; Moody's bought into the venture in 2006, rising to the then 49 percent regulatory cap, and now holds 30 percent. From its Beijing base, CCXI rates issuers across China's interbank and exchange bond markets and, through its Hong Kong arm, issues global-scale ratings.

Founding of the Chengxin group in 1992

The China Chengxin Credit Rating Group traces its origin to China Chengxin Credit Management Co., Ltd., incorporated in Beijing on 8 October 1992 through the approval of the People's Bank of China. It was the first nationwide credit rating company in China, created when the country's capital markets had only just begun to grow and when the very concept of an independent published credit opinion was new. The group's founder and chairman, Mao Zhenhua, is an economist whose public profile helped establish credit rating as a recognised discipline in China. In its founding period from 1992 to 1999 the group built subsidiaries and branches across China, laying the nationwide network — later spanning Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Fujian, Wuhan, Shandong, Liaoning, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanxi and Shaanxi — on which its market-leading position rests. The group describes itself as the oldest Chinese rating agency, with the biggest market share in the domestic market and the highest reputation in the industry.

China's first rating joint venture

In August 1999 the group formed China Chengxin International Credit Rating Co., Ltd. as a joint venture between China Chengxin Securities Rating Company, Fitch (then Fitch IBCA) and the IFC, the World Bank Group's private-sector arm. The IFC had worked for several years to help China's capital markets develop, including by fostering an effective and efficient credit rating industry, and the venture was China's first credit-rating joint venture. The partnership gave CCXI access to international rating methodology, analyst training and governance practices at a time when no foreign agency could operate independently onshore. In July 2004 Fitch divested from the joint venture, aligning with its global strategy of securing majority control over its overseas subsidiaries rather than holding a minority stake it could not consolidate.

The Moody's partnership

In September 2006 Moody's moved in to buy up to the regulatory cap of 49 percent of CCXI from the local shareholders, taking over the equity positions previously held by Fitch and the IFC. Moody's added management and technical support on rating methodologies and analyst training, and CCXI operated for years as the principal bridge between the global rating industry and China's onshore bond market. The stake was later reduced; by the time of NAFMII's 2017 ranking CCXI was described as 30 percent-owned by Moody's Investors Service, and Moody's retains a minority holding. The relationship also placed CCXI at the centre of international coverage of Chinese ratings: when CCXI downgraded the United States' credit rating from AAAg to AAg+ in May 2023, international reporting stressed both that CCXI was China's largest rating agency and that it was minority-owned by a United States agency.

Domestic market position

CCXI rates bonds in China's interbank market, which accounts for about 90 percent of onshore debt trading and is the only market accessible through the Bond Connect programme, as well as securities in the exchange market. In the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors (NAFMII) ranking of the five interbank bond rating agencies released in December 2017, CCXI was ranked the best of the five, ahead of Dagong, Shanghai Brilliance, China Lianhe and Golden Credit Rating International. The commendation was qualified: NAFMII said all five agencies had not lived up to its standards, and inflated ratings remained a perennial problem, with nearly 70 percent of the roughly 1,500 publicly traded bonds covered by the four largest agencies ranked AA or above in Bloomberg-compiled data. A Bank for International Settlements working paper cited in the same coverage found domestic Chinese ratings averaged six to seven notches above global agencies' ratings for the same company — the structural context in which CCXI's market leadership has been debated.

Hong Kong expansion: China Chengxin Asia Pacific

The group went to Hong Kong to establish China Chengxin (Asia Pacific) Credit Ratings Company Limited, which received a Type 10 licence — for providing credit rating services — from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission on 28 June 2012. The licence made Chengxin the first Chinese rating agency to go out of mainland China to conduct credit rating business in the international capital markets, issuing global-scale ratings from Hong Kong years before the mainland market was opened to wholly foreign-owned raters. Through the Hong Kong arm the group rates offshore issuers and Chinese issuers' international debt on a global scale that foreign investors can compare with Moody's, S&P and Fitch grades, in contrast to the domestic Chinese scale used onshore, on which the great majority of issuers cluster at AA and above.

Sovereign and international ratings

CCXI publishes sovereign ratings on its global scale, including on China itself: in December 2023 the group announced it had maintained China's sovereign credit rating at AA+g with a stable outlook, judging that the economy still showed strong resilience, that the government retained sufficient fiscal room, and projecting growth of 5.3 percent for 2023 and around 5 percent for 2024 — a view published on the same day Moody's cut its outlook on China to negative. In January 2025 CCXI assigned an AAA/Stable rating to the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), which Afreximbank said made it the first African multilateral financial institution to receive an AAA rating from CCXI and one of the first to achieve a top grade in the Chinese market on the strength of its standalone credit profile; CCXI's report cited the bank's strategic positioning, risk management, profitability and liquidity coverage. Such mandates illustrate CCXI's effort to operate as an international agency, not solely a domestic one.

The Yongcheng Coal default and the 2020 ban

CCXI's most serious regulatory setback followed the November 2020 default of Yongcheng Coal and Electricity Holding Group, a major state-owned coal miner that CCXI had rated AAA shortly before it failed to repay. The default shocked the onshore market precisely because the issuer carried the highest domestic grade, and it triggered a broader official reckoning with inflated ratings. In December 2020 CCXI was banned from undertaking new interbank rating business for three months over misconduct related to the Yongcheng case. The episode became a reference point in subsequent reforms, which from 2021 allowed some bonds to be issued without disclosed ratings and removed the mandatory rating requirement for exchange-issued bonds, reducing the mechanical demand for top grades on which the domestic industry had depended.

Regulatory penalties and industry reform

Scrutiny continued after the ban. In February 2024 the People's Bank of China imposed administrative penalties on six rating agencies, including a fine of 7.685 million yuan on CCXI for violating independence requirements and the principle of consistency; the same action fined, among others, Shanghai New Century (Shanghai Brilliance), S&P's China unit, CSCI Pengyuan and China Lianhe. The penalties formed part of a sustained tightening that also produced warning letters and rectification orders across the industry. CCXI has responded within a wider industry shift, reported in 2025, away from a pure issuer-pays model toward investor-pays and subscription models: CCXI, China Lianhe and Anrong — together controlling about 70 percent of the market — piloted platforms under which full research reports move behind tiered subscription access while simplified rating summaries remain free, alongside new analytical products such as CCXI's QE Rating System.

Role in China's credit rating system

More than three decades after its founding, CCXI occupies a distinctive place among the four major domestic agencies conventionally listed together — CCXI, China Lianhe, Dagong and Shanghai Brilliance — as the oldest, the largest by market share, and the one with the deepest institutional links to both the World Bank Group's market-building efforts of the 1990s and to Moody's. Its history mirrors the development of Chinese credit rating itself: state-approved creation in 1992, international joint venture in 1999, global-agency partnership in 2006, offshore licensing in 2012, top ranking and top-grade default controversies in 2017–2020, and, most recently, fines and business-model reform as regulators press the industry toward greater differentiation and independence. For users of Chinese bond ratings, CCXI's reports remain a primary reference for onshore credit, read alongside the global-scale opinions its Hong Kong arm and its foreign competitors now publish.