Xi Jinping has been placing top bankers and finance officials in senior provincial policy roles across the country. I think this is an important indication of how concerned Beijing has become over how to address provincial debt issues. By appointing financial vice governors...
...and bankers in several important policy-implementation roles, Beijing is acknowledging that the old business-as-usual approach to debt has failed pretty badly and that they must address it more imaginatively and aggressively.
I heard about this several weeks ago at a small...
I heard about this several weeks ago at a small...
...presentation for friends by Plenum, the new China-based research group who are quoted in this article. They pointed out at the time that it is pretty rare for technocrats and non-politician types to get so many of these provincial roles, so this change may be quite...
...significant. Unfortunately all the experienced bankers in the world don’t change the two key facts.
First, there is no way to prevent debt from rising unsustainably until Beijing accepts much lower growth rates – probably under 3%. And second, the only way to resolve the...
First, there is no way to prevent debt from rising unsustainably until Beijing accepts much lower growth rates – probably under 3%. And second, the only way to resolve the...
...debt problem (any debt problem) is to assign the cost to some sector able to bear it, and the only sectors to whom the costs can be assigned without undermining China’s long term growth potential are local governments and local elites, who are very powerful and very unwilling.
