In the 1990’s the People’s Republic of China began to commercialise its state owned banks. More recently, some Chinese banks have started to impose ATM charges for routine cash withdrawls, as well as other bank charges. This has led to so much customer uproar – 1.3bn people can’t be wrong - that the Chinese Banking Regulatory Commission is now looking at revising the banks service pricing regulations.

If only we had service price regulation for UK financial services, as vulnerable people continue to be ripped-off by our banks. This week I had the great privilege to discuss bank charges on Chinese state radio. It was facinating to learn of the Chinese banking experience from Professor Zhao Xijun of Renmin University in Beijing’s Haidian District.

From my perspective, there is now a common theme from around the world on banking practices: a dearth of transparency on charging and price; unfair treatment of customers; and financially exploitative behaviour, generally against the bank’s most financially vulnerable customers. For example, last week a federal judge in California ordered Wells Fargo to pay $203m to customers in restitution for manipulating transactions to maximise the overdraft fees it had charged.

This was on the cards. In 2007, film maker Karney Hatch was encouraged to sue Wells Fargo for a refund of bank charges in California using the small claims system by US consumer protection legend, Ralph Nader. He did, and he won. Karney did the UK filming for Overdrawn! his docu-movie on bank charges at Govan Law Centre. At that time, the UK bank charges campaign had helped UK citizens recover £1.7bn in refunded overdraft charges.

Of course, last years UK Supreme Court decision in the OFT’s bank charges test case effectively wound-back the UK campaign clock and dropped us off in the stone age with no bus fare home. Or so the banks would like you to believe. The Supreme Court went to great efforts to explain that its decision related to a very narrow point of law, and did not prevent further challenges to the fairness of overdraft charges. But the damage had been done.

It's a tougher fight now. Powerful companies are able to use Scotland’s civil justice system to create financial barriers which can make it very difficult or impossible for ordinary people to access justice. We’re currently seeing this with all small claims actions being remitted to ordinary cause procedure for bank charges. We have no class action procedure in Scotland, so powerful opponents can also pick off litigants individually.

The position in Scotland is in need of urgent repair, but sadly, our Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, remains uninterested. We’ll battle on at Govan Law Centre though. So for now, ni hao (hello) and zaijian (good-bye) S?gélán (Scotland).

The Chinese radio discussion can be heard here:

Mike