The Bank of China is a Chinese majority state-owned commercial bank headquartered in Beijing and one of the very largest banks in the world. The Bank of China was formed in 1912 by renaming the Qing dynasty's Ta-Ching Bank under the newly established Republican government. Until 1942, it issued banknotes on behalf of the government as one of the "Big Four" banks of the period, together with the Bank of Communications, Central Bank of China, and Farmers Bank of China. Following the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, the bank continued activity in Taiwan where it renamed itself International Commercial Bank of China upon privatization in 1971, while its mainland operations were absorbed into the People's Bank of China. In 1979, the Bank of China was re-established by spin-off from the PBC in the early phase of Chinese economic reform. As of 31 December 2019, it was the second-largest lender in China overall and ninth-largest bank in the world by market capitalization value, and it is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. Wikipedia