[11] The International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis[12] and other sources, such as the Article IV Consultation Reports,[13][note 2] state that, at the end of 2014, the "general government gross debt"-to-GDP ratio for China was 41.54 percent.
"[23] This, according to the IMF paper, means that "with implicit state guarantees still in place, banks have little incentives to seek better projects and correctly price risk.
"[23] A 2015 International Monetary Fund report concluded that China's public debt is relatively low "and on a stable path in all standard stress tests except for the scenario with contingent liability shocks," such as "a large-scale bank recapitalization or financial system bailout to deal, for example, with a potential rise in NPLs from deleveraging.
"[27] Former Federal Reserve System Chairman Ben Bernanke, earlier in 2016, commented that "the...debt pile facing China [is] an 'internal' problem, given the majority of the borrowings was issued in local currency.
"[28] Many economists have expressed the same views, dismissing worries over the size of Chinese government debt, either in absolute terms or in proportion to the nation's GDP, as "nonsensical".
[29] Amidst the China-U.S. trade war,[30] economists underline that persistent issues in China's economic structure may further curtail growth,[31][10] and have led to new benchmarks of high debt-to GDP ratios in 2020 and in 2022.
"[32] The Chinese central government authorized provinces to issue at least 2.6 trillion yuan ($419 billion) in bonds in 2015 in order to stabilize the financial system.
[33] By 2023, national debt owed by local governments totaled 92 trillion yuan or 76% of People's Republic of China's reported economic output in 2022.