It is never a good idea to have an overdeveloped capital market, as is the case in the US. Nor is it a good idea to have an underdeveloped capital market, as is the case in China. But at least governments can address the former more easily than the latter.
Thus, after years of talking about it, China is finally hastening plans to develop a domestic municipal bond market. When the ministry of finance included the launch of the municipal bond market as one of its objectives this year, many people shrugged. But there is a fresh urgency that has caused the bureaucrats to move more quickly.
That urgency has to do with the challenge of trying to curb the shadow banking system, which accounts for as much as 50 per cent of new credit in China. Developing the bond market will bring activity out of the shadows, while helping to minimise destabilising defaults.