A spokesman for the bank said the ICBC would stick to the goal of listing the entire bank in the bourse, instead of letting part of its better assets go public first as claimed by some media.

"Our attitude towards stock market listing is to actively pursue it, but not to treat it as a final target," the spokesman said.

He explained, "To go public is only one step in the reform of state-owned banks whose progress, fundamentally, is decided by whether to enhance corporate governance, sharpen competitiveness and learn from excellent international banks in business management."

The ICBC is now speeding up comprehensive reform -- dealing with mountains of bad debts and ameliorating corporate governance,he said.

From 2004 to 2006, the bank expects to net 240 billion yuan (28.9 billion US dollars) of business profits and finish disposing of 300 billion yuan-worth (36.1 billion dollars) of non-performing assets, which will bring its bad loan ratio to less than 18 percent by the end of 2004, and less than 10 percent by 2006.

The spokesman said embryonic corporate governance mechanisms would take shape in the bank within three years, and to achieve this the ICBC would have to improve internal control, tighten riskcontrol, streamline operation and build a more scientific system to assess achievements.

A prerequisite for the ICBC to go public is to become a joint-stock enterprise. Industrial insiders say the bank would usher in strategic foreign investors just like the Bank of China (BOC), another state-owned bank which recently expressed the hope to sellshares in 2005.

China's "big four" includes the ICBC, the BOC, the AgriculturalBank of China (ABC) and the China Construction Bank (CCB). Due to excessive lending to money-losing state-owned enterprises in the past decades, they became debt-laden, analysts say.

China's State Council, or the cabinet, poured a total of 45 billion US dollars -- using the country's massive foreign currencyreserve -- into the BOC and CCB to help them raise capital in cash,a threshold for a bank to gain stock market listing.

The ABC is widely tipped by financial experts to be the last among the "big four" to go public on the back of its huge debts. It has been keeping low profile.

The ICBC raked in more than 150 billion yuan (18.1 billion dollars) of business profits from the year 2000 to 2003, continuing a four-year growing streak. Its non-performing loan ratio also plummeted 26 percentage points -- from a peak of 47.5 percent at the end of June 1999 to 21.3 percent at the end of lastyear, the bank's spokesman revealed.