The financial shock which has recently hit the emerging markets stemmed in part from a period of severe stress in the Chinese money markets, which has now been brought under control. But the challenges facing China are chronic, not acute. And since the country is much more than “first among equals” in the Brics, a prolonged slowdown in its economy would keep all emerging market assets under pressure for a long while.
Although China is probably not facing anything as dramatic as a “Lehman” moment, it will need to spend several years tackling the combination of excess credit and over-investment that has followed the Rmb4tn ($652bn) stimulus package of 2008. Hailed at the time as a masterstroke, the package has caused a hangover that has now been implicitly acknowledged by the new administration under reformist Premier Li Keqiang.
China is in the midst of a classic credit bubble. The ratio of total credit to gross domestic product has risen from around 115 per cent in 2008 to an estimated 173 per cent, an acceleration in credit expansion that has spelt danger in many other economies. Much of this has come in the poorly regulated shadow banking sector, where the annual rate of credit expansion exceeds 50 per cent. The Chinese authorities are signalling, correctly, that this must slow sharply.