In the literature, there are substitution and complementary hypotheses between trade credit and bank loans (Love et al., 2007; Demirgüç-Kunt and Maksimovic, 2001; Yang, 2011). We use Chinese firms to test the substitution and complementary hypothesis on trade credit and bank credit for two reasons. First, as shown in Fig. 1, the percentage of accounts payable to total liability for Chinese firms has an increasing trend over the period 2006–2012.3 More precisely, the share of accounts payable to total liability in Chinese firms (not including financial industry) reached 20% in 2012 from 15% in 2006. In contrast, the share of short-term debts to total liability has declined from 27% in 2006 to 17% in 2012. The share of accounts receivable to total liability remained quite stable from 2006 to 2012. However, Nilsen (2002) shows that the percentage of accounts payable to total liability is only 13% for the U.S. manufacturing firms. According to Quarterly Financial Report,4 the percentage of accounts payable to total liability in United States is 28% in 2012. It is worthy to analyze that the 2008–09 financial crisis depressed the share of short-term debts to total liability relative to the share of accounts payable/receivable to total liability by 4 percentage points.