The Bank’s predecessor can be traced back to the Agricultural Cooperative Bank established in 1951. Since the late 1970s, the Bank has successively experienced different stages of development, including a national specialized bank, a wholly state-owned commercial bank, and a state-controlled commercial bank. In January 2009, the Bank was restructured into a joint stock limited company. In July 2010, the Bank was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.

The Bank is one of the major comprehensive financial service providers in China and is committed to building a first-class international commercial banking group with distinctive operating characteristics, efficient and convenient services, complete and coordinated functions, and outstanding value creation capabilities. With its comprehensive business portfolio, vast distribution network and leading technology platform, the Bank provides customers with a variety of corporate banking and retail banking products and services. It also conducts financial market business and asset management business, and its business scope also covers investment banking, Fund management, financial leasing, life insurance and other fields. As of the end of 2016, the Bank's total assets were RMB19,570.061 billion, loans and advances issued were RMB9,719.639 billion, deposits received were RMB15,038.001 billion, capital adequacy ratio was 13.04, and net profit for the year was RMB184.060 billion.

As of the end of 2016, the Bank had a total of 23,682 domestic branches***, including the head office, the head office business department, 3 head office specialized agencies, 37 first-level (directly affiliated) branches, 365 Second-level branches (including provincial branch business departments), 3,506 first-level sub-branches (including municipalities, directly-affiliated branch business departments, and second-level branch business departments), 19,714 grassroots business institutions and 55 other institutions. Overseas branches include 10 overseas branches and 3 overseas representative offices. The Bank has 14 major holding subsidiaries, including 9 domestic and 5 overseas.

Since 2014, the Financial Stability Board has included the Bank in the list of global systemically important banks for three consecutive years. In 2016, the Bank ranked 29th in the ranking of the world's top 500 companies by Fortune magazine in the United States; in the ranking of the top 1,000 global banks by The Banker magazine in the United Kingdom, the Bank ranked No. 1 in terms of Tier 1 capital. 5 places. The bank's Standard & Poor's issuer credit rating is A/A-1, and Fitch's long/short-term issuer default rating is A/F1.