中国不良信贷或超5万亿美元，加剧世界经济风险

choi

Peter Eavis, 中国不良信贷或超5万亿美元，加剧世界经济风险. 纽约时报中文网, Feb 4, 2016
cn.nytimes.com/business/20160204/c04db-badloans/

, which is translated from

Peter Eavis, Worth Trillions, Bad Loans Haunt Global Economy; Risk from China grows; A toxic debt hangover -- cleanup of banks may take years. New York Times, Feb 4, 2016 (the topmost report in the front page).

Quote"

(a) "China is the biggest source of worry. Some analysts estimate that China’s troubled credit could exceed $5 trillion, a staggering number that is equivalent to half the size of the country’s annual economic output.  Official figures show that Chinese banks pulled back on their lending in December. If such trends persist, China’s economy * * * may then slow even more than it has [slowed] * * * But it’s not just China.

(b) "China’s financial sector will have loans and other financial assets of $30 trillion at the end of this year, up from $9 trillion seven years ago, said Charlene Chu [cn.nytimes.com: 朱夏莲], an analyst in Hong Kong for Autonomous Research [LLP: 2009- , based in London, no Chinese name].  'The world has never seen credit growth of this magnitude over a such short time,' she said in an email.
* * *

"Headline figures for bad loans in China most likely do not capture the size of the problem, analysts say. In her analysis, Ms Chu estimates that at the end of 2016, as much as 22 percent of the Chinese financial system’s loans and assets will be 'nonperforming,' a banking industry term used to describe when a borrower has fallen behind on payments or is stressed in ways that make full repayment unlikely. In dollar terms, that works out to $6.6 trillion of troubled loans and assets. * * * She estimates that the bad loans could eventually lead to $4.4 trillion of actual losses.
* * *

"Given the murkiness of the Chinese financial industry, other analysts arrive at estimates for a 'baseline' figure for bad loans. Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the HSBC School of Business at Peking University, said that an analysis of corporations’ interest payments to Chinese banks suggested that 8 percent of loans to companies might be troubled. But Mr Balding said it was possible that the bad loan number for China’s overall financial system could be higher.

(c) "The looming question for the global economy, however, is how China might deal with a vast pool of bad debts. * * * 'My sense is that the Chinese policy makers seem like a deer in the headlights,' Mr Balding said. 'They really don’t know what to do.'

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest. Because China is opaque, few knows what is going on there. This is my take-home message.

(b) headline (adj): "(IMPORTANT THING) a headline figure or number is the most important one or the one that people notice most <The credit card company will cut its headline rate of interest to 19.9 per cent>  <The headline figure of 3.6 per cent isn't as bad as it looks - ignore the effects of oil prices, and the inflation rate drops to 2.5 per cent>"
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ ... mplified/headline_3
(i) The same URL ending with "headline_1" has ordinary definition: "标题."
(ii) headline inflation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline_inflation
(versus core or underlying inflation)

(c) A baseline figure or baseline has no specific meaning in finance, economics or accounting.