This article seeks to add a new angle to the on-going discussion of the new Basel Accord (Basel III) by leading a discussion of how China’s banking sector has responded to the new regulatory standards promulgated under Basel III, and why China’s implementation of Basel III will provide critical implications and lessons to international banking regulators. Despite its relatively recent participation in international financial regulatory standard making and featuring somewhat different economic and political frameworks from western regimes which have to date formed the primary experimental ground for the Basel rules, China’s emerging financial markets and economy lend unparalleled opportunities to assess the effectiveness and resilience of the new Basel requirements in rigor and angles unseen before.Starting with a brief historical overview on bank regulation in modern China, and the evolution of the Basel rules, the article discusses China’s efforts in implementing Basel III, its latest compliance status, as well as important implications from impending challenges and discrepancies faced by the Chinese banking sector not yet evident from its official statistics.