New Delhi, April 2 (IANS) China’s official headline growth figures are fake and the country’s economy is headed for a major danger from its mounting bad debt and a rapidly ageing population, a new report has said.

Japanese news site Nippon.com said in the report cited US think tank Rhodium Group estimates that true growth of the Chinese economy is closer to 2.5–3.0 per cent rather than the Chinese government’s real GDP growth figures for 2025 at 5 per cent.

It also cited some China-watchers who believe the country is currently seeing essentially zero growth.

“There are two major obstacles standing in the way of China’s economic future: massive amounts of bad debt born from a bursting bubble, and an inverted population pyramid from low birthrates and aging population,” the report said.

The report highlighted signs of deflation showing “no signs of ending” with real growth figures outpacing nominal growth for three years.

Further, it noted a 1.7 per cent drop in total government revenues in 2025, marking the first decline since the COVID‑19 shock in 2020.

A large stock of non‑performing loans far larger than Japan’s post‑bubble burden are nearing a bursting credit bubble scenario.

“After the bubble economy burst, Japan’s economic institutions had to deal with roughly ¥100 trillion worth of bad debts. China’s nonperforming loans, though, are estimated to be the equivalent of about ¥1.5 quadrillion,” the report warned.

It mentioned visible signs of economic strain in social media and on the ground with shopping streets lined with shuttered shops, empty shopping malls and homeless people scavenging for food and sleeping in underpasses.

It also argued that there are economists in China who estimate the youth jobless rate at over 40 per cent. China’s population dipped from its peak in 2021, with 7.92 million births in 2025 from 15 million up until 2018.

The media house pinned the blame of China’s dire economic state on President Xi Jinping’s economic mismanagement by supporting stronger, better, and bigger state-owned enterprises and suppressing innovators.

—IANS

aar/pk