(Reuters) – China looks set to allow more bond defaults as part of its market reform agenda, but domestic ratings agencies and bond investors are still betting Beijing will lose its nerve, for fear of hammering its banks.
Critics say the $4 trillion Chinese bond market, the world’s third largest, has misallocated its vast sums to some of China’s most inefficient companies, such as state-owned dinosaurs in sunset industries or opaque local government financing vehicles.
The market’s assumption that such issuers have an unwritten state guarantee has kept bond yields low, while demand among investors is high, especially after a summer stock market crash sent many fleeing to relative safety.
"China is still experiencing an onshore debt boom," said Mervyn Teo, credit analyst with Lucror Analytics, but he believes recent defaults argue for more caution.
As recently as Thursday, China Shanshui Cement defaulted on a 2 billion yuan ($300 million) onshore debt payment, and in April Baoding Tianwei Baobian Electric became the first state-owned firm to default, while another, metals trader Sinosteel, deferred interest payments last month.
All of which suggests Chinese authorities, which used to work feverishly to prevent defaults, are growing more willing to let weak firms fail.
Despite such defaults, the spread between benchmark yields on safe AAA-rated bonds and riskier AA-rated bonds has fallen sharply in recent months, indicating that people see them as less, not more, risky.
Indeed, it has been declining gradually all year, as investors have instead assumed that government concern about slowing growth will make them less willing to let market discipline run its course, especially in the state sector.
"In the past there were no defaults, because almost all issuers were SOEs or government backed," said Phillip Li, managing director at China Chengxin Asia Pacific Credit Ratings.
"This cannot continue. In order for the debt market to be normal, unhealthy debt should be identified."
AGENTS OF BOOM
Domestic debt rating agencies ought to perform that function, but industry insiders say they are instead engaging in a price war for clients, in many cases offering optimistic ratings in exchange for the contract.
Their ratings certainly paint a rosier picture of local firms than their foreign counterparts’.
The local agencies say their ratings take into account the fact of regular government intervention, an unwritten assumption that foreign rivals are less likely to rely upon.
But at the bottom of the heap, distressed debts all smell equally bad, says Kalai Pillay, Fitch Ratings director in Singapore, so their domestic and foreign ratings ought to converge but don’t.
"A ‘D’ is a ‘D’ – there is no ambiguity," he said.
Policymakers in Beijing are faced with a sticky dilemma.
Let more of its industrial dinosaurs go extinct, prompting the local agencies to downgrade the bonds of companies like them, which in turn could trigger a crisis for China’s banks, by far the biggest bondholders.
Or let an unreformed bond market continue to set artificially low yields and throw good money after bad, which exacerbates China’s industrial overcapacity and increases the likelihood of falling prices and economic stagnation.
"Avoiding a crisis and the spread of systemic risk is always the number one priority of the government," said Oliver Barron, policy research analyst at China-focused investment bank NSBO.
"This means that some companies that shouldn’t be bailed out will be, perpetuating the current moral hazard and leading to wasted capital," he said. ($1 = 6.3663 Chinese yuan renminbi)( SHANGHAI/HONG KONG, Nov 15/2015)