The official data doesn’t look that bad—this is normal in China. Bad loans are only about 1.6 percent in total, compared to 1.18 percent in the United States. But then, the questions start: What is the real number?
The answer can only be higher, a lot higher. Investment bank CLSA estimates it could be as high as 8.1 percent for all bank loans. Compare this to bad loans in the United States of about 3 percent at the height of the financial crisis.

St. Louis Fed