A Bridge on Economic Issues between China and the World
Facebook 
Twitter 
Instagram
WeChat 
Email Most Popular
Fintech Lending and Cashless Payments
Pulak Ghosh, Boris Vallée, Yao Zeng, May 13, 2026Banks have long dominated lending thanks to their informational advantages over borrowers, but fintech lenders are leveling the playing field by exploiting an unexpected data source: cashless payments.
Pollution in the Rain: Strategic Evasion of Water Pollution Regulations in China
Runhao Zhao, Ye Yuan, Apr 15, 2026Rain dilutes and cleanses surface water—but not always. We document a novel “polluting-in-the-rain” phenomenon: industrial firms strategically time the release of untreated wastewater into waterways during heavy rainfall, exploiting the natural dilution effect to evade water quality regulations that are primarily designed for dry-weather conditions. Such strategic emissions pose a serious threat to local water quality and significantly undermine China’s national pollution abatement efforts.
The Geography of Market Power: Rethinking Consolidation in China’s Steel Industry
Loren Brandt, Feitao Jiang, Yao Luo, Yingjun Su, May 06, 2026China’s steel industry is the world’s largest, but it is also famously fragmented. For years, policymakers have pushed for mergers and acquisitions to consolidate the sector, aiming to boost efficiency and create a handful of national champions.
Industry/Policy View China Subsidy Estimates Depend on an Interest-Rate Yardstick
Yuankun Li, Jul 01, 2026Before subsidy figures are used to justify new trade measures, the benchmark behind below-market borrowing should be made comparable across countries. The central issue is that the OECD/MAGIC treatment makes China's BMB estimate LPR-based, and this can make measured borrowing support several times larger than estimates based on more comparable interbank or government-bond benchmarks.
When Real Estate Stops Driving Growth: Lessons from China and Japan
Kenneth Rogoff, Yuanchen Yang, Aug 19, 2026It is now widely recognized that real estate lies at the heart of the slowdown in China’s growth; the slowdown has been deep and persistent despite the lack of the kind of systemic banking crises that plagued many Asian economies in the late 1990s and many advanced economies during 2008-09. Exploiting a new detailed city level data set covering almost 300 municipalities, we explore the extent to which China’s slowdown can be attributed to overhang of excess real estate and infrastructure, and whether there are any similarities to Japan’s crisis that started in the 1990s. Importantly, we conjecture that other mechanisms are likely at play in real estate boom/bust episodes in addition to the classic Bernanke-style banking crisis, and that China is perhaps not so different.
