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19 July 2024

Trillions in Hidden Debt Drove China’s Growth. Now It Threatens Its Future.

Brian Spegele and Rebecca Feng

Officials were bullish about the future of their factory town in early 2019. The economy was prospering, a new industrial district was on the way and an elevated light-rail system was taking shape.

“The achievements of the past year have not come easily,” Mayor Wu Wei said in a city report at the time. He credited the grit of local party leaders but didn’t mention an ace in the hole.

For years, Liuzhou and scores of other Chinese cities together amassed trillions of dollars in off-the-books debt for economic development projects. The opaque financing was the yeast that helped China rise to the envy of the world.

Today, overgrown construction sites, sparsely used highways and abandoned tourist attractions make much of that debt-fueled growth look illusory and suggests China’s future is far from assured.

Liuzhou, a city in the southern region of Guangxi, raised billions of dollars to build the infrastructure for a new industrial district, where a state-owned financing group acquired land and opened hotels and an amusement park. Other tracts of acquired land sit vacant, and many area streets look practically deserted. Birds flit through the rows of abandoned buildings at an unfinished apartment complex.

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