BEIJING?- Stolen bank accounts and unwanted marketing calls were the focus of a China Central Television (CCTV) program Thursday night broadcast to mark International Consumer Rights Day.

The annual show this year exposed that staff with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Merchants Bank sold depositors' private information, making their online bank accounts vulnerable to attack.

The show further blackens the image of the country's banks, which have long been criticized for making fat profits while treating their customers without respect.

In the most recent dispute, Chinese netizens have railed against Hong Qi, president of China Minsheng Bank, who admitted banks' profits were high, saying that sometimes he was even "embarrassed" to release profit figures as they were too good.

"Banks are making huge profits, but depositors have to accept negative real interest rates. It's not fair," read a post on Sino Weibo, the Chinese-language Twitter-like microblogging service.

China's benchmark one-year deposit rate is 3.5 percent even after three 50-basis-point hikes in 2011, but inflation hit 5.4 percent last year.

With an interest margin of 3.06 percentage points, Chinese commercial banks saw net profits up by 36.34 percent year-on-year to 1.04 trillion yuan ($164.56 billion) in 2011, meaning that these banks earned 2.85 billion yuan each day over the past year.

The listed Shenzhen Development Bank disclosed in its annual report that the lender paid 278,000 yuan per annum on average to each of its employees in 2011, 6.5 times more than the per capita disposable income for local residents in the southern city of Shenzhen.

Banks' services, however, failed to match its staff's shockingly high incomes.

In another dispute, a woman surnamed Dong in the eastern city of Hangzhou was reported to have forgotten to pay back 191.11 yuan that she overdrew five years ago. The bank called her the other day, asking her to pay 10,854.43 yuan for the overdraft.

"Isn't it usury? That's why lenders can make so handsome profits," read an entry posted under the account name "Abing."

"The woman should be punished for failing to repay money on time, but I wonder why the bank didn't notify her earlier?" the post continued.

China Banking Association said Thursday that it received 290 complaints last year, with most aimed at banks' poor customer services, charging practices as well as credit card and lending services.

The association warned that "these practices have seriously damaged the banking sector's reputation."

But several executives denied that banks are earning excessive profits.

Responding to public outcry on interest-rate monopoly and unnecessary fees, Li Ruogu, president of the Export-Import Bank of China, said: "large parts of net profits are taken away by the government."

Yang Kaisheng, president of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, also argued that the country's interest margin remains below the global average.

Chinese banks may have good reasons to defend themselves, but analysts say much more effort will be required for banks to reestablish credibility after recent disputes tarnished their images.

Guo Tianyong, director of the Banking Research Center at Beijing's Central University of Finance and Economics, suggested lowering the entry threshold for financial institutions and encouraging social financing to break the monopoly positions of the big banks.

"On the other hand, the government should push interest rate reforms to narrow net interest margin, such as unilaterally raising deposit rates or cutting loan rates," Guo wrote in a Weibo post.