ABSTRACT
From the traditional Chinese perspective, the social level of a merchant or a businessman was ranked the lowest within the overall Chinese social strata. While the topography illustrates the orientation and practice of conventional banking and finance, it also addresses the reality gap between financial practice and indigenous Chinese philosophy. Within the cultural topography of banking and finance, the innocent sphere is situated at the topsoil level. This is the level which is driven by personal inclinations and engaged with attitude and behaviour while pragmatism, competition, greed and accumulation through-exploitation are the dominant characteristics. Banking and finance should be developed as resources to be constantly shared by humanity at large. Marketization, the dominant force of economies for decades, has long overshadowed the importance of a society being supported by or operating within a framework of interdisciplinary considerations. Long-term human sustainability, which has to be a function of a much broader interdisciplinary understanding and knowledge, is mostly neglected.
