The Daily Telegraph

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China’s debt spree returns to haunt
The Daily Telegraph

Bail-outs are coming thick and fast in China. In less than a week the authorities have had to step in to prop up the banks, rescue the insolvent railway system and save the near bankrupt city of Wenzhou from a spectacular debt crash.

The Communist Party is now struggling to cope with the fall-out. On Monday, the state investment fund Central Huijin began buying stakes in China’s four top banks to restore confidence and halt the slide in share prices.

China’s finance ministry is quietly intervening to underwrite China’s railway system. This behemoth is drowning with $300bn of debts after breakneck expansion, is in arrears on $25bn of debts to its two largest suppliers and has run out of money to pay workers on the Lanzhou-Chonqing rail project.

Meanwhile, Bejing is negotiating a $15bn bail-out for the enterprise hub of Wenzhou south of Shanghai, where panic has set off a credit crunch for small business and builders. finance. House prices began to fall across the country in September, according to China Index Academy.