BEIJING — Faced with falling revenues, Chinese local governments are borrowing to finance infrastructure projects at the slowest pace in three years, despite encouragement from Beijing.
In March, China's national government set a cap of 3.9 trillion yuan ($554 billion) for local governments to issue special-purpose bonds this year, up 3% from 2023 and the largest annual limit. However, the output in January-August was only 66% of the quota, which was about 20% less than the value of the same period last year.