China is preparing to tackle the significant backlog of unpaid bills owed by local governments to the private sector, according to people familiar with the matter, an amount of arrears some have estimated at over $1 trillion. The government is considering asking state lenders and policy banks including China Development Bank to lend to local authorities so they can make the payments in arrears, the people said, asking not to be named because the matter is private. The amount of money under dis

The Ministry of Education recently announced the results for the third batch of first-class national-level undergraduate courses, with the “General Survey of Economics” course having been among those successfully selected, marking yet another major breakthrough made by the course after winning recognition as a Tsinghua University Excellent Course in 2024. This signifies that the development of such a curriculum has garnered a high degree of offical approval at the national level, fully demonstra

As markets await China to unveil its economic policy roadmap for the second half, economists and policy advisers have renewed calls for ramping up fiscal stimulus measures to address persistent challenges in the property sector and local government debt. Despite progress in bolstering consumption — particularly through trade-in programs in the first half, weak property market performance and fiscal strain on local governments could limit further recovery in consumption and investment, they said

Recently, the global regulatory framework for stablecoins has begun to take shape. According to industry data, the market size of stablecoins has grown from approximately $5 billion in 2020 to over $250 billion in 2025, with an annual compound growth rate exceeding 100%. Standard Chartered predicts the market could reach $2 trillion by 2028.

It is time to build a policy consensus on China's space for bold fiscal expansion, leveraging it for deep reforms aimed at improving social welfare and accelerating the country's much-anticipated economic rebalancing, according to leading economists and policy advisers at top think tanks.

On July 8, 2025, the Society for the Analysis of Government and Economics (SAGE) hosted an online lecture entitled “How Can Economics Help Us to Better Understand and Improve Today's World Economy?” This lecture was presented by Daron Acemoglu, 2024 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences and Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The webinar represented the twentieth installment in SAGE's Lectures in Government and Economics Series.

China should issue 30 trillion yuan (US$4.2 trillion) in treasury bonds to swap local governments’ hidden liabilities to re-energise growth momentum and cut off financial risks at their root, a Beijing-based think tank has proposed. Such a move, combined with a few trillion yuan worth of additional bonds to shore up the property market, boost consumption and remove excessive industrial capacity, would be a strong step toward resolving China’s local-level debt and real estate crises once and for