Chinese banks are probably now stronger than America’s.

The global economic contagion has spread to China, sending shudders around the world. Chinese leaders are worried about domestic social unrest, while U.S. leaders are worried about whether China will continue loading up on Treasury securities as our budget deficit explodes.

Yet one of the few bright spots is the surprising strength of China's banking system. Remember when that system seemed on the verge of collapse? That's where the banks stood until the reforms of the past 10 years.

But now the picture is completely different. As former World Bank official Pieter Bottelier, now a professor at Johns Hopkins, notes, "The irony is that 10 years ago, China's banks were among the weakest in the world and today they are among the strongest, however primitive their system."

How did they turn things around?

The short answer is that the Chinese government imposed many of the same market-based principles used in the West. (We'll get to why they seem to work better in China in a minute.) Officials improved regulations and supervision, introducing risk capital requirements and tightening nonperforming loan criteria and provision standards.

The government allowed banks to be listed on stock exchanges, which meant they had to report their earnings according to Western accounting standards. Now two of the world's three biggest banks by market capitalization are Chinese: Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, which is the biggest, and China Construction Bank, No. 3.