Beijing must remain alert to threat of financial crisis, senior adviser says
Nation’s economy has been ‘hijacked’ by property, creating a huge threat to financial stability, government counsellor Xia Bin warns
The financial risk facing China is far larger than official numbers suggest and Beijing must do more to prevent the situation becoming a crisis, a senior adviser to the government warned on Monday.
In a speech made in the Chinese capital, Xia Bin, who has been advising the State Council – China’s cabinet – on financial policy since 2009, painted a far less rosy picture of the country’s financial industry than the one presented by Beijing.
“Systemic risks are elusive and spread fast” in China, said the 67-year-old, who was a key figure in a clean-up campaign of non-banking financial institutions two decades ago, when he was a senior official at the People’s Bank of China.
Beijing must remain alert to the threat of a financial crisis, he said, adding that government indicators did not reflect the true dangers.
