China’s Looming Debt Disaster

In the aftermath of Washington’s debt-ceiling debacle, Vice President Joe Biden was in Beijing on Friday, desperately trying to reassure the Chinese government that the American economy is not in a downward spiral.

“And very sincerely, I want to make clear that you have nothing to worry about,” the vice president said.

Whether or not he succeeded in soothing his hosts’ anxiety remains to be seen. Yet in trying to placate Beijing, the vice president was making a major miscalculation. China may own $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury obligations, but from the get-go, Biden should have eschewed playing defense and gone on the offensive. He should have asked the Chinese to reassure him about their debt problems and, more urgently, their impending economic slide.

Despite all the apocalyptic pronouncements about America’s budget problems, the reality is that the U.S. has a higher credit rating than China and, unlike Beijing, has never repudiated its sovereign debt. More important, the People’s Republic has been understating its debt for years to avoid global attention and criticism.

Indeed, China claims its debt-to-GDP ratio—the standard measure of sustainability—was a healthy 17 percent at the end of last year. Yet Beijing-based Dragonomics, a well-respected consultancy, put China’s ratio at 89 percent—about the same as America’s. Worse still, a growing number of analysts think the Chinese ratio was really 160 percent. At that astronomical level, China looks worse than Greece.

The wide discrepancy in estimates is due to the so-called hidden debts. The largest of these off-the-books obligations have been incurred by local governments and state banks. Yet there are other components, including central-government debt incurred for municipal and local projects, Ministry of Finance guarantees related to partial bank recapitalizations, and miscellaneous obligations such as grain-subsidy payments. No one actually thinks Beijing will default on its outstanding external debt, but these hidden obligations matter; to work down the crushing debt load, the country’s technocrats are adopting strategies that will cripple growth for a decade, maybe longer. (more)