{"id":52973,"date":"2023-02-27T09:38:36","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T00:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/feb\/27\/big-buddha-and-funeral-home-rights-how-china-is-tackling-its-massive-provincial-government-debt-burden"},"modified":"2023-02-27T09:38:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T00:38:36","slug":"big-buddha-and-funeral-home-rights-how-china-is-tackling-its-massive-debt-burden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=52973","title":{"rendered":"Big Buddha and funeral home rights: how China is tackling its massive debt burden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zero-Covid spending and lower taxes has led to \u00a34.2tn in local government debt, posing a \u2018big headache\u2019 for the economy<\/p>\n<p>In China\u2019s Sichuan province, Leshan city has plans to sell the operating rights to the Big Buddha, a 71-metre tall Tang dynasty stone statue, in one of a series of creative methods cash-strapped local governments are using raise money.<\/p>\n<p>Having spent more than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/feb\/15\/china-provinces-spent-almost-pounds-43bn-on-covid-measures-in-2022\">\u00a342bn<\/a> last year on Covid-prevention measures, and hit by falling tax revenues, by December 2022 local governments had accumulated 35tn yuan (\u00a34.2tn) in debt, up from 30.5tn yuan the previous year. That means that China\u2019s provincial debt burden is roughly 20% bigger than Germany\u2019s total GDP. In 2022 Hegang, a city in the northern province of Heilongjiang, became the first city in China to undergo a fiscal restructuring.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/feb\/27\/big-buddha-and-funeral-home-rights-how-china-is-tackling-its-massive-provincial-government-debt-burden\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zero-Covid spending and lower taxes has led to \u00a34.2tn in local government debt, posing a \u2018big headache\u2019 for the economyIn China\u2019s Sichuan province, Leshan city has plans to sell the operating rights to the Big Buddha, a 71-metre tall Tang dynasty stone&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3576,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-chinese-economy"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52974,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52973\/revisions\/52974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}