The growth of China's banking assets continued to slow down in 2012 as financial institutions registered a 17.7 percent increase in total assets last year, 0.6 percentage points lower than in 2011.

According to data released by the China Banking Regulatory Commission on Monday, the total assets of Chinese lenders reached 131.3 trillion yuan ($21.1 trillion) as of December. Their liabilities stood at 122.6 trillion yuan during the same period, a year-on-year increase of 17.5 percent.

Among all the lenders, joint-stock commercial banks surpassed urban commercial banks, leading the race with a nearly 28 percent increase in assets to 23.4 trillion yuan.

Assets of major commercial lenders rose 11.4 percent to nearly 58 trillion yuan, accounting for 44 percent of all the banking assets. The proportion went down by 2.5 percentage points compared with the previous year.

The assets of urban commercial banks climbed 24 percent to 12.4 trillion yuan, taking up more than 9 percent of the total banking assets.