China risks frittering away its stimulus spending on speculation in stocks and real estate, reports said Monday, citing economists who say surging bank loans risk inflating risky asset bubbles.
The comments by prominent economists came as Shanghai's benchmark Composite Index hit another high for the year, gaining 1.6 percent, or 47.10 points, to 2,975.31. The index has gained more than 60 percent since the beginning of the year.
About 20 percent of bank lending is going into stock speculation, and another 30 percent or so is going into the property market, state-run newspapers cited Wei Jianing, an economist with a Cabinet-level think tank, as saying.
- Newsmax
China's Shanghai Composite Index has rallied 61 percent this year, the world's third-best performer, after plunging a record 65 percent in 2008. The nation's property sales jumped 45.3 percent to 1 trillion yuan in the first five months, the statistics bureau said June 11, compared with a 19.5 percent decline for all of 2008.
...Peng Wensheng, an economist at Barclays Capital in Hong Kong, said that the rally in stocks and property was to be expected given the size of the stimulus spending.
"Some people are concerned about this so-called speculation but in reality with such a large monetary expansion if asset markets did not respond something must be wrong," Peng said. "There's a risk of a very excessive rally in the asset markets but we are not at that point yet."
- Bloomberg