Abstract: Bank connections (BC) are intuitionally deemed to be an effective method to mitigate corporate financing constraints (FC). However, due to the fact that greater mutual interference between bank connections and political connections exists in the corporate financing constraints, and there exists significant endogeneity between bank connections and financing constraints, the theories and empirical researches based on the emerging countries are still far from sufficient. By making use of a unique research design which takes the BC-FC association into consideration, this paper proves that the relaxation effect on corporate financing constraints by China’s bank connections is subject to the strict constraints of political connections. For companies with political connections, bank connections can make them even better by further alleviate the corporate financing constraints; while for companies without political connections, bank connections cannot play a role of alleviating financing constraints. Therefore, political connections are the prerequisite for the role-playing of bank connections. The bank connections have no significant relaxation effect on the financing constraints among private enterprises, but they do have significant effect among SOEs. Thus it can be seen that bank connections in China are playing a role in alleviating corporate financing constraints by means of indirect mechanism, not direct mechanism.

Key words: bank connections; financial constraints; political connections; SOEs