Chinese companies borrowing to repay debts

China is awash in a credit stimulus that is bigger as a proportion of GDP than the one that Beijing unleashed in the aftermath of the 2008/2009 financial crisis. However, the debt efficiency of the Chinese economy is at its lowest point since early 2009. Much of the new financing is not going into investment, but is rather being used to repay debts built up since the 2009/2010 stimulus, the Financial Times reports. Of the total corporate bonds issued in 2015, some 44% of prospectus that at least some of the proceeds would go to repay outstanding debts, up from 8% of all bonds issued in 2014. In 2016 year to date, the proportion has remained high, at 42%.