“You gotta wonder how much provincial debt is the result of unfunded central government mandates.”
Most of it is graft, corruption, and theft.
the People's Bank of China published a report that looked at corruption monitoring and how corrupt officials transfer assets overseas. The report quotes statistics based on research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: 18,000 Communist Party and government officials, public-security members, judicial cadres, agents of state institutions and senior-management individuals of state-owned enterprises have fled China since 1990. Also missing is about $120 billion.
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2079756,00.html