[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

The Chinese banks, run by the party, have more than 500 billion in bad loans to industry that can never be repaid, because the party leaders are trying to keep the machine running and fund their clients.

Those are old figures--it's almost a trillion now.

Also, a lot of the "bad loans" involve money that was borrowed and then stolen. That money will never be repaid because it's sitting in Swiss accounts--and the account owners have titles like "Minister" and "General."

[Cicero]

That's why I said "more than." It's what they admitted to, in that article Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote for the Telegraph.

A trillion wouldn't be surprising. The Nomenklatura of Communist parties have a way of turning into kleptocracies. Some of it they stole, I'm sure, but some of it has simply been spent to keep their supporters loyal and prop up the command economy.

[Cicero]

I should have added that there is also evidence that workers all over China are being paid more than the profits from the goods they produce are worth. That will eventually have to be reckoned with.