Filed under china-banking.

China's Bank-AI Push Forgot the Middle

China's largest banks are automating the base of their workforce — branch tellers, credit clerks, back-office processors — while importing senior AI PhDs for the apex and eliminating the middle tier entirely. A Hangzhou court ruling in April 2026 drew the first legal line against pure AI substitution; the more serious reckoning arrives when the next credit cycle exposes the judgement gap left by the hollowing. The reskilling pathway that would close it does not yet exist.