China’s banks saw the value of non-performing loans rise by RMB500 billion (US$78.27 billion) in the first nine months of the year, Caixin reported, citing unreleased data from the China Banking Regulatory Commission. That indicates the ratio of bad loans to total loans rose to more than 2%, well above the 1.59% indicated by publicly available data at the end of September. But the amount of capital banks have set aside to absorb the impact of bad loans has dropped from nearly three times the potential loss at the start of 2014 to less than two as of September’s end.