Oh, and look at this. China's growth rate was slightly better than expected in the second quarter, and what is it attributed to? "A wave of lending" by the central bank. That doesn't happen by accident.

Apparently China is willing to take on more initiative to boost the economy than it lets on...

HONG KONG — China announced on Wednesday morning that its economy grew 7.5 percent in the second quarter, marginally better than expected, as a wave of lending unleashed by the central bank helped local governments continue investment projects even as housing construction remained very weak.

The National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing also released figures on Wednesday showing that industrial production and fixed-asset investment strengthened slightly more than expected in June while retail sales growth slowed slightly, as the heavy lending appears to have headed off or at least delayed a widely expected broader slowdown of the Chinese economy.

But that lending has come at the price of adding further to the country’s considerable domestic debt burden, which has been rising steeply ever since the Chinese government resorted to very heavy monetary stimulus in early 2009 so as to limit the effects of the global financial crisis.

Western economists had estimated that the Chinese economy grew 7.4 percent in the second quarter, the same as the first quarter. Similarly, industrial production grew 9.2 percent in June from a year ago instead of the expected 9 percent and fixed-asset investment increased 17.3 percent for the first half of the year, compared with forecasts of 17.2 percent.

But growth in retail sales was 12.4 percent in June, instead of matching May’s figure of 12.5 percent, as economists had expected.

The People’s Bank of China released on figures on Tuesday showing that bank lending jumped in June from a year earlier, and a category called total social financing, which includes many forms of so-called shadow banking, increased even faster.

The central bank has encouraged commercial banks to direct more of these loans to small and medium-size enterprises, which have long struggled for credit. But many businesspeople in China say that the real beneficiaries of greater lending, as in the past, have been state-owned enterprises and local governments.

Many economists still expect the Chinese economy to slow further as housing prices begin to deflate after soaring for most of the last three decades. Wang Tao, an economist at UBS, predicted on Monday that growth would decelerate to 6.8 percent next year, with a 15 percent chance that it would fall closer to 5 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/business/international/china-says-lending-put-growth-rate-at-7-5-percent.html