In June and December last year, China’s interbank interest rates jumped from their normal level of about 3 per cent to peak as high as 9 per cent a year. The shockwaves did not stop there. Banks scrambled for deposits and pushed up interest rates on their wealth management products. Funding costs in the vast shadow banking sector also moved up, while stocks and bonds suffered falls.
Observers at home and abroad expressed concern about bad debts and the fragility of the banking industry. Some even called it China’s “Minsky moment” – a term coined during the Russian debt crisis of 1998 to describe the turmoil that arises when overstretched investors must finally repay their debts. Some fear that tighter credit markets could cause asset prices to collapse and precipitate a meltdown of the banking industry. But as someone who worked at China’s central bank in the 1980s, I am encouraged by the government’s willingness to tackle the country’s 35-year addiction to cheap credit.
Central banks are usually thought of as lenders of last resort. But in the 1980s and 1990s, the People’s Bank of China was the first port of call for banks whose lending ambitions were larger than their deposit bases could sustain.