South China Morning Post with a report on comments from a former adviser to the State Council (China's cabinet).
Xia Bin advised in his role as a senior official at the People's Bank of China.
"Systemic risks are elusive and spread fast" in China
- China's official non-performing loan ratio, for instance, bore little resemblance to the true figure ... "From a dynamic perspective, it should be beyond [the official figure of] 2 per cent"
Similarly, banks' exposure to the property market was far higher than official figures suggested
- Official numbers say that about a quarter of all outstanding bank loans are linked to real estate, but Xia said the real figure could be as high as 80 per cent if all loans that used property as collateral were taken into account.The whole Chinese economy had been "hijacked" by property, and that had created an enormous threat to the country's financial stability
