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Discussion Paper
A Closer Look at Chinese Overseas Lending
While considerable attention has focused on China’s credit boom and the rise of China’s domestic debt levels, another important development in international finance has been growth in China’s lending abroad. In this post, we summarize what is known about the size and scope of China’s external lending, discuss the incentives that drove this lending, and consider some of the challenges these exposures pose for Chinese lenders and foreign borrowers.
Discussion Paper
Is China Running Out of Policy Space to Navigate Future Economic Challenges?
After making progress slowing the pace of debt accumulation prior to the pandemic, China saw its debt levels surge in 2020 as the government responded to the severe economic slowdown with credit-led stimulus. With China currently in the midst of another sharp decline in economic activity due to its property slump and zero-COVID strategy, Chinese authorities have responded again by pushing out credit to soften the downturn despite already high levels of debt on corporate, household, and government balance sheets. In this post, we revisit China’s debt buildup and consider the growing ...
Discussion Paper
Could Rising Household Debt Undercut China’s Economy?
Although there has been a notable deceleration in the pace of credit growth recently, the run-up in debt in China has been eye-popping, accounting for more than 60 percent of all new credit created globally over the past ten years. Rising nonfinancial sector debt was driven initially by an increase in corporate borrowing, which surged in 2009 in response to the global financial crisis. The most recent leg of China’s credit boom has been due to an important shift toward household lending. To better understand the rise in household debt in China and its implications for financial stability ...
Journal Article
How Stable Is China’s Growth? Shedding Light on Sparse Data
Policymakers, academics, and market participants have raised many questions in recent years over the accuracy of China’s official economic growth rates, both in terms of levels and volatility. This issue is of considerable importance for policymakers because fluctuations in China’s economic activity can have significant impacts on growth, employment, inflation, and other policy objectives, given China’s large shares of world output, trade, and commodity demand, and its rapidly growing role in global financial markets. This study addresses the question of growth volatility using a set of ...
Discussion Paper
Gauging the Strength of China’s Economy in Uncertain Times
Amid increasing pressure on the Chinese economy from China’s trade conflict with the U.S., assessing the strength of the Chinese economy will be an important watch point. In this post, we provide an update on China’s recent economic performance and policy changes. While China is likely to counter growth headwinds from the escalating trade tensions with additional policy stimulus, the country’s complex fiscal dynamics and the varying interpretations of the strength of its economic growth made judgments of the efficacy of China’s policy response challenging even in a more predictable ...
Discussion Paper
How Has China’s Economy Performed under the COVID-19 Shock?
China’s economy was the first to be hit by the COVID-19 outbreak, the first to be locked down, and the first to begin an economic recovery. We examine the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on China’s GDP growth using a set of alternative growth indicators. Our analysis finds that China’s official GDP growth figures over the first three quarters of this year have been broadly in line with alternative indicators and that growth presently is staging a strong rebound and providing a boost to the global economy. However, this rebound faces potential headwinds in the forms of high levels of debt, ...
Discussion Paper
Why Are China’s Households in the Doldrums?
A perennial challenge with China’s growth model has been overly high investment spending relative to GDP and unusually low consumer spending, something which China has long struggled to rebalance. As China attempts to move away from credit-intensive, investment-focused growth, the economy’s growth will have to rely on higher consumer spending. However, a prolonged household borrowing binge, COVID scarring and a deep slump in the property market in China have damaged household balance sheets and eroded consumer sentiment. In this post, we examine the impact of recent shocks on Chinese ...
Discussion Paper
A Closer Look at Emerging Market Resilience During Recent Shocks
A succession of shocks to the global economy in recent years has focused attention on the improved economic and financial resilience of emerging market economies. For some of these economies, this assessment is well-founded and highlights the fruits of deep, structural economic reforms since the 1990s. However, for a much larger universe of countries, the ability to weather shocks is still mixed and many remain vulnerable. In this post, we explore the divide between the two sets of countries and focus on the effects of recent economic shocks, including the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Discussion Paper
Will Mounting Supply Chain Strains Hamstring the AI Investment Boom?
The conflict in the Middle East has precipitated a global supply shock—the third in six years following the pandemic in 2020 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The current shock raises the specter of spillovers to the U.S. through both prices and physical shortages of goods. A critical conduit for spillovers through these channels is via Asian supply chains, especially from middle- to lower-middle income countries in southeast Asia, which are key suppliers for goods needed for the AI infrastructure build-out in the U.S. These countries are also heavily reliant on Middle East energy ...