Credit risk management (CRM) is to identify, measure, monitor, and control risk arising from the possibility of default in payments. Existing CRM tools available for large financial institutions do not meet the requirements of rural commercial banks (RCBs) because their main customers are SMEs and farming households whose financial data and credit rating records are not available. RCBs in China also expose specific risks connected to rural commercial banking business and in particular farming-related loans and services. Adopting a qualitative analysis approach to identify key factors contributing to failures of RCBs’ customers, we endeavour to develop a CRM framework for RCBs in China. The framework, which is based on the identification of business failures of RCBs’ customers and factors contributing to failures of SMEs and farming households, incorporates financial and non-financial variables. Using nonfinancial variables along with financial variables as predictors of company failure significantly improves credit analysis quality and accuracy. Also, this study recognises guanxi1 as risk potentials and includes guanxi risks in the framework. This study has made contributions to the extant literature on CRM of banks in general and RCBs in particular.