China bubble in ‘danger zone’ warns Bank of Japan
China risks a repeat of Japan’s boom-bust disaster 20 years ago as exorbitant property prices combine with a demographic tipping point, a top Japanese official has warned.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
TelegraphUK
21 Aug 2012
“China is now entering the ‘danger zone’,” said Kiyohiko Nishimura, the Bank of Japan’s deputy-governor and an expert on asset booms.
The surge in Chinese home prices and loan growth over the past five years has surpassed extremes seen in Japan before the Nikkei bubble popped in 1990. Construction reached 12pc of GDP in China last year; it peaked in Japan at 10pc.
Mr Nishimura said credit and housing booms can remain “benign” so long as the workforce is young and growing. They turn “malign” once the ratio of working age people to dependents rolls over as it did in Japan.
China’s ratio will peak at around 2.7 over the next couple of years as the aging crunch arrives. It will then go into a sharp descent, compounded by the delayed effects of the one-child policy.
“Not every bubble-bust episode leads to a financial crisis. However, if a demographic change, a property price bubble and a steep increase in loans coincide, then a financial crisis seems more likely,” he said in Sydney at a conference on asset booms.
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