Main Report: Leverage and Risk Management

Abstract

In 2011, when China’s local government debt problem was brought into the spotlight, foreign institutions started to voice pessimistic views on the prospects of China’s economy. In response to this, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) established the national balance sheet research group in a bid to carry out in-depth analysis of the sources, status quo and development prospects of the debts of governments at all levels and various types of economic entities in China, assess the sovereign debt risks, judge the national capacity and explore the countermeasures. In 2012, we completed the preparation of China’s sovereign balance sheet simultaneously with two other domestic research groups. The main findings of this research group were published in Issue 6 and 7 of Economic Research in 2013 and later expanded into a book entitled China’s National Balance Sheet 2013—Theory, Methodology and Risk Assessment, which was published by China Social Sciences Publishing House (2013). These findings have attracted wide attention at home and abroad: they have been widely cited domestically; their English versions have also been included in the monograph published by IMF. In 2015, the paper and the book won the first Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Award and the National Soft Science Award.