{"id":440069,"date":"2026-10-14T16:29:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T09:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/chinas-september-lending-surprise-masks-a-much-deeper-slump-in-credit-demand-440069\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T16:29:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T09:29:26","slug":"chinas-september-lending-surprise-masks-a-much-deeper-slump-in-credit-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/chinas-september-lending-surprise-masks-a-much-deeper-slump-in-credit-demand-440069\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s September lending surprise masks a much deeper slump in credit demand"},"content":{"rendered":"
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China’s new bank loans climbed to\u00a0\u00a51.08 trillion in September, beating market expectations of\u00a0\u00a5975 billion. At first glance, that seems like a welcome improvement especially after\u00a0the rather dismal lending figures we’ve seen over the past few months. That being said, lending is still down roughly 16% compared to September last year. And adding to that, the year-on-date snapshot isn’t pretty either.<\/p>\n

In looking at the first nine months of 2026,\u00a0Chinese banks have now extended \u00a511.52 trillion in new loans during this period. That falls short when viewed in comparison to the\u00a0\u00a514.75 trillion over the same period last year. In short, we’re looking at a rather substantial\u00a022% decline in new lending this year.<\/p>\n

I would argue that the figures above tell us quite a bit about\u00a0the state of China’s domestic economy.<\/p>\n

The problem that China is facing right now is not that\u00a0banks aren’t willing to lend. It is more of a case that\u00a0households and businesses aren’t particularly eager to borrow in the first place.<\/p>\n

A big part of that can be traced back to the property market crash that unfolded in 2021.\u00a0With the property sector still struggling to this day, households have little incentive to take on new mortgages. Meanwhile, businesses aren’t exactly rushing to expand operations when domestic consumption remains sluggish.<\/p>\n

Even the PBOC itself has already acknowledged that\u00a0slower loan growth could become the new normal, as declining borrowing from the property sector and local government financing vehicles outweighs demand from emerging industries.<\/p>\n

As such, I wouldn’t read too much into the improvement from the September figure today. It needs to be put into context as\u00a0China’s credit recovery remains very much an uphill battle.<\/p>\n

Sure,\u00a0Beijing can make borrowing cheaper and encourage banks to lend. However, to convince households and businesses to actually take on more debt is a whole other matter.<\/p>\n

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This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China’s new bank loans climbed to\u00a0\u00a51.08 trillion in September, beating market expectations of\u00a0\u00a5975 billion. At first glance, that seems like a welcome improvement especially after\u00a0the rather dismal lending figures we’ve seen over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}