The rising ties between the Asian economies and Australia are showing up in banking statistics more clearly with each passing month. The latest APRA monthly banking statistics, for November 2011, show that Asian banks licensed in Australia have been building their business loan books faster than any other group.Ten banks included in the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority statistics recorded business loan growth above 20 per cent for the period from September 2009. One of these ten, ME Bank, grew its business book from essentially nothing, but, of the remaining nine, seven were Asian (the other two were Credit Suisse and Bank of Cyprus). And of these ten, the five with the largest books were all Asian giants:Sumitomo Mitsui - 27 per cent growth in 14 months.Bank of China - 159 per cent growth.Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) - 80 per cent growth.Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) - 39 per cent growth.Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) - 96 per cent growth.Bank of China and ICBC are the two Australian-licensed members of China's Big Four, while HSBC and OCBC are the long-standing financial giants of Hong Kong and Singapore respectively. Sumitomo Mitsui is Japan's second-largest bank.The Chinese banks, in particular, appear to be working to the standard dictate of foreign expansion of service industries: follow your customers. Bank of China last year co-arranged the syndicated project financing for the US$1.2 billion loan for West Australia's Karara iron ore project. (To what extent the expansion of Bank of China and ICBC serves the Chinese government's domestic industry strategy is not yet clear.)State Bank of India and Taiwan Business Bank rounded out the ten whose business loan growth since September 2009 has topped 20 per cent.However, the books of these seven fast-growing Asian lenders are still small; together they make up just 3.2 per cent of the value of all business loans made by Australian licensed banks.But the contrast with Australian-licensed European giants couldn't be greater: during the same period Rabobank shed 30 per cent of its book, Société Générale 66 per cent, Royal Bank of Scotland 16 per cent, UBS 17 per cent and WestLB 43 per cent.