The comments came just weeks after Royal Bank of Scotland had agreed to take a £500 million stake in Bank of China.

Zhu Min, assistant to the president at the state-controlled Bank of China, pointed out that three of the big four state-owned banks already had lined up foreign strategic partners. He said that more deals were expected.

“There are still more than 14 in the pipeline,” he said at a seminar at the European Union-China Business Summit.

Mr Zhu did not identify the banks in the talks, but said that most of the so-called shareholding banks, or those that have reorganised from direct state ownership, were looking for foreign partners. He said: “In three to four years’ time, every Chinese bank will have a foreign bank as partner.”

Among the deals that have been announced so far, Bank of America and the Singapore government-linked Temasek Holdings have taken stakes in the state-controlled China Construction Bank.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is also said to be close to a deal that could bring in Goldman Sachs, Allianz Group and American Express as partners, while Bank of Communications has HSBC as a strategic partner.

The Chinese Government is keen to ensure that the banks attract funds and make them more competitive before the financial sector opens the same lending services to foreign competition at the end of next year.

For their part, foreign lenders are eager to tap China’s pool of $1.6 trillion (£870 billion) in household savings.

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