...Only 180 of the more than 3,100 listed non-financial Chinese corporates are directly exposed to foreign-currency debt due to having issued non-yuan-denominated bonds or taken out foreign-currency loans. The total outstanding foreign-currency debt for these companies is USD244bn, according to Bloomberg data as of September 2015 ¡ which represents only a small proportion of the more than USD15trn in total corporate debt in China. Even for those corporates with foreign-currency debt, this only represented a relatively low 30% of their aggregate gross debt stock at end-2014. Macroeconomic data confirms the overall picture of primarily local-currency-denominated Chinese debt. Gross external debt for the economy as a whole totalled just 8.7% of GDP at end-2014, and short-term external debt only 0.3% of GDP. As such, the immediate risks to Chinese corporate debt sustainability from exchange-rate depreciation are very small. The relatively small rate of yuan depreciation thus far ¡ around 2.5%...
