Bass says Washington wields a ’trump card’ that should serve as a deterrent against a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Communist China is grappling with the most severe economic crisis in its history, a downturn that the regime will not recover from, according to Kyle Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management.
“There is nothing that is going to bail China out of their economic spiral. They’re having a real estate crisis, a banking crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and now they need to be worried about their current account,” Bass said in an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that aired on June 26.
Bass said U.S. tariffs and declining trade threaten China’s economic advantage, which is its trade surplus with the United States.
China’s exports to the United States plunged by 35 percent in May compared to a year earlier, according to Chinese customs data.
“China’s once bright spot is now in question,” Bass said. “I actually am surprised it’s not down more.”
China has also been hit hard by capital flight.
In 2024, Bass said, China experienced a massive outflow of both foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment totaling about $500 billion, pointing to the gap between its trade surplus of about $980 billion and its current account surplus of about $420 billion.
China is also facing unsustainable debts. When combining China’s sovereign debt and local government financing debt, Bass estimated that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio should be roughly 350 percent, which he said is difficult to manage considering the various economic challenges.
Another indicator of China’s financial crisis is the performance of China’s bond market, Bass said. As of June 27, the yield on China’s 10-year sovereign bond is approximately 1.64 percent, compared to 4.26 percent for the U.S. 10-year Treasury.
“So the Chinese government is pretty good at lying about whatever they want to lie about, but the bond market kind of tells the truth, and the bond markets telling you that China is in an economic winter,” Bass said.
China’s economic troubles have persisted for several years, highlighted by the collapse of major real estate developers Evergrande and Country Garden, which marked the onset of the current property crisis in 2021.
In February, the national unemployment rate reached 5.7 percent, the highest in two years, while the youth jobless rate topped 16.9 percent.
Adding to the concerns, consumer prices fell for a fourth consecutive month in May, while industrial profits decreased by 9.1 percent compared to a year earlier, underscoring deepening deflatory pressures in the world’s second-largest economy.
By Frank Fang and Jan Jekielek
