Jim Chanos: China Debt Surge Echoes 1990s Japan

Jim Chanos: China Debt Surge Echoes Japan Slowdown Pattern by Bonnie Cao and Ye Xie, Bloomberg

• Debt relative to GDP repeating pattern before lost decade
• China has made `missteps' in handling stock market meltdown

China is on a path similar to the one that preceded Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s as the country’s debt level grows twice as fast as its economy, according to Jim Chanos, the hedge fund manager who predicted the 2001 collapse of Enron Corp.

“We have an economy addicted to credit,” Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates LP, said during a panel discussion on China in New York Tuesday. While the country doesn’t appear to be facing an “imminent collapse,” it is on a trajectory similar to the...