rfmcdonald | [LINK] The Economist on the impending Chinese debt crisis (Reply)

The Dragon's Tales linked to this Economist article suggesting China is on the verge of a 2008-style economic crash.

In most respects, double-digit growth is a relic of the past for China. In the third quarter the economy grew by just 6.9% year-on-year according to official data, and probably by a percentage point or two less in reality. Yet bank loans increased by 15.4% in the third quarter compared with the same period in 2014. Having released a torrent of credit to buoy the economy during the financial crisis, China was supposed to have started deleveraging by now. Instead, banks are continuing to pump debt into the economy, while the authorities, apparently worried about the damage a contraction in credit might do, coax them on.

Growth in credit has at least slowed in recent years. A broad measure is “total social financing” (TSF), which encompasses bank loans, corporate bonds and a range of shadowy loan-like products. TSF growth soared to 35% in 2009 when the government called on banks to open the taps and support the then-faltering economy. It has since decelerated: it rose by 13% in the third quarter from a year earlier. The problem, though, is that nominal GDP growth has fallen much lower, to 6.2%.

This means that China’s overall debt-to-GDP ratio is continuing its steady upward march (see chart). Debt was about 160% of annual output in 2007. Now, China’s debt ratio stands at more than 240%, or 161 trillion yuan ($25 trillion), according to calculations by The Economist. It has risen by nearly 50 percentage points over the past four years alone, with slowing growth only serving to magnify indebtedness.

A rapid increase in debt in a short space of time has historically been a good predictor of financial trouble, from Japan in the 1990s to southern Europe in the 2000s. But there is no level that automatically triggers crises. Since most of China’s debts are held within the government-controlled bits of its economy (state-owned firms are the biggest debtors and state-owned banks their biggest creditors), the country has the means to avoid an acute crisis. It can, in effect, roll over bad loans as they come due or abstain from calling them in. However, although that spares the economy short-term pain, it leaves it with a chronic ailment. Ever more credit is needed to sustain growth. Loans that should have gone to sprightly companies with promising new ideas go instead to corporate zombies.