Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news

An official with China United Telecommunications Corp. yesterday denied media reports that the country's second largest mobile telecom operator will join efforts to set up a postal bank.
"It's not true," the official said, as quoted by today's Sina.com.cn on condition of anonymity. "I have consulted the officials concerned, and they told me there's no such plan."
This is Unicom's first public response to reports since August that it will join the State Post Bureau and China's largest telecom operator, China Telecommunications Corp, in founding a postal bank as part of the restructuring of post offices on China's mainland, in turn part of the country's postal reforms.
China Telecom hasn't commented on the reports so far.
As planned, the postal bank will be set up this year, to become the country's' fifth state-owned bank.
The new lender will conduct both deposit and lending business, compared with the previous single service of taking deposits, according to Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
It will have the largest branch network, as there are currently over 37,000 post offices nationwide, with two-thirds in rural areas under county-level administration.
The post offices have attracted deposits worth more than 1 trillion yuan (US$120 billion) from 250 million clients.