A man at a brokerage house in Shanghai. REUTERS
Josh Rudolph, Atlantic Council: Will China’s Economic Slowdown Lead to a Major Crisis?
China has incurred the largest debt buildup in recorded economic history—and the prognosis is not good. The International Monetary Fund surveyed five-year credit booms near the size of China’s and found that essentially all such cases ended in major growth slowdowns and half also collapsed into financial crises.
A 50 percent chance of a financial crisis for the world’s second-largest economy would represent one of the greatest threats to the global economy.
Can China avoid a crisis? Both bears and bulls make equally compelling arguments about China’s current challenges, suggesting the probability of a major crisis is in line with the historic precedent of 50/50.
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WNU Editor: For people in the West it will probably mean cheaper goods, and cheaper gas (China is the world's second largest consumer of oil, and Chinese oil imports will drop if a slowdown hits). And for those countries dependent on selling resources to China .... it will be a major hit. But the biggest crisis will happen within China itself. The Chinese government needs to create tens of millions of new jobs each year to meet the needs of a growing population. Failure to provide new jobs will mean tens of millions of young men and women unemployed. In China .... having tens of millions of people out of work and facing a bleak future has always been a recipe for unrest.