Credit boom has created vast swathes of unused assets

China is the biggest risk for global markets at this current time. It’s clear that China has experienced a dramatic credit boom (since the GFC). Its commercial banks’ aggregated balance sheet has expanded dramatically in the past 7 years – i.e. from US$10 trillion to US$30 trillion today. Its debt to GDP has risen rapidly, it has had rapid growth in its shadow banking sector while it’s also experienced one of the largest construction booms in recent decades (i.e. both absolute and relative to GDP). As a result, vast swathes of the economy’s infrastructure lie unused (and, therefore, generating a zero return). On an examination of office vacancy rates in Tier 2 Chinese cities, we discovered multiple cities with vacancy rates in the 30 – 40% (and one with a vacancy rate of 68%).