China’s Bank Regulator Warns of Rising Bad Loans Due to Uneven Recovery

China’s Bank Regulator Warns of Rising Bad Loans Due to Uneven Recovery
A bank employee uses a money counting machine to count out 100 yuan notes at a bank in Shanghai, China, on Aug. 8, 2018. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images
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BEIJING—Chinese banks are facing the threat of rising bad loans in the future as the current economic recovery is unbalanced and lacks a solid foundation, the country’s top banking and insurance watchdog said on Wednesday.

Outstanding non-performing loans in the banking sector stood at 3.5 trillion yuan ($540.79 billion) by end of June, an increase of 108.3 billion yuan ($16.7 billion) from the beginning of the year, while the bad loan ratio declined to 1.86 percent, Liu Zhongrui, an official at the statistics department of China Banking and Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), told reporters in Beijing.