Chinese NPA's

China is staggering under the huge amounts of Non-Performing Assets (NPA's) that its state-run banks have accumulated. It seems like almost every week, the Government has to step in and bail out a bank to prevent it from going under.

Reading about this today brought back memories of conversations I have had with Chinese students at NC State. Invariably, they would have taken a huge loan to fund their studies - And when I asked them about how they planned to repay the money, they would tell me that they did not plan to do that, and that "Repaying loans was not part of Chinese culture" !