Latest Data Show CCP Local Government Debts Reach Record High

The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Ministry of Finance released the latest data on local government bonds on Jan. 30, which shows China’s outstanding local government debts reached a record high of 40.74 trillion yuan ($5.71 trillion) by the end of 2023. The data show that nationwide local government issued 9.34 trillion yuan ($1.31 trillion) worth of new bonds in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 27 percent. Last year, the scale of local borrowing hit a record high, nearly 2 trillion yuan ($280.8 billion) more than in 2022. In December 2023 alone, local government bond issuance reached 195.6 billion yuan ($27.5 billion). With the rapid increase of local government debts, bond interest payments are rising year by year. The data from the Ministry of Finance shows that interest payments on local government bonds in 2023 were 1,228.8 billion yuan ($172.5 billion). According to statistics from Caixin.com, a major Chinese finance media, this interest payment scale has reached the highest level since 2015, an increase of 9.6 percent compared with 2022....