Trade tensions between China and the United States have played an important role in swinging global stock markets, but the effects are difficult to quantify. Using a comprehensive database constructed by Wisers, we develop a novel trade sentiment index (TSI) based on textual analysis that assesses the positive or negative tone of Chinese media coverage of the China-US trade situation and evaluates the TSI’s capacity to...
International borrowing by Chinese nationals has increased rapidly over the past 10 years. Some of this borrowing seems to be motivated by carry trade activities. Regulatory arbitrage may have played a role in this trend.
We evaluate the performance of Chinese fintech and bank credit providers during COVID-19. Comparing samples of fintech and bank loan records across the pandemic outbreak, we find that fintech companies are more likely to expand credit access to new and financially constrained borrowers after the start of the pandemic. However, the delinquency rate of fintech loans triples after the outbreak, but there is no significant...
In this paper, we show that a general equilibrium model that properly captures the risks in old age, the role of family insurance, changes in demographics, and the productivity growth rate is capable of generating changes in the national saving rate in China that mimic the data well. Our findings suggest that the combination of the risks faced by the elderly and the deterioration of family insurance due to the one-child policy may account for approximately half of the increase in the saving rate between 1980 and 2010. We also show that changes in total factor productivity growth account for the fluctuations in the saving rate during this period.
China’s spectacular growth over the 2000s has slowed since 2013. The driving force behind the country’s growth was investment, so the key to understanding the slowdown lies in understanding what sustained investment in the past. This column shows how a preferential credit policy promoting heavy industrialisation explains the trends and cycles in China’s macroeconomy over the past two decades. This policy was not without negative consequences, particularly in terms of the distortions it introduced for business finance. Going forward, China needs to focus on creating the right incentives for banks to make loans to small productive businesses.