After three Chinese banks are bailed out, how many more are at risk?

WORKING AT Hengfeng Bank, an embattled Chinese lender, requires a thick skin these days. On August 30th the bank’s Communist Party committee summoned its members, including top executives, for a self-criticism session, of the sort common in the Maoist era. “No one talked about their achievements. They talked only of their shortcomings and problems. They pointed the knife blade at themselves,” the bank reported afterwards. “Blushing and sweating, they expelled their poison.”

The revival of self-criticism under Xi Jinping, China’s president, has raised alarm about the direction in which he is steering the country. Other banks have also conducted similar sessions, a testament to Mr Xi’s assertion of party control over the economy. But in the case of Hengfeng, ravaged by corruption scandals and bailed out last month by the government, the sight of its employees examining their misdeeds was, in a way, reassuring. It suggests that officials are getting a handle on one of the worst actors in the banking system, even if their techniques sometimes owe more to Lenin than to Dodd or Frank.

The question now is how many more Hengfengs there are. It was the third bank to be rescued in the space of three months. In May regulators took over Baoshang Bank in Inner Mongolia. In July Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), a state...