So far, shock waves from the massive implosion of the $305 billion property development group China Evergrande have not been felt abroad, but that could soon change if the crisis forces Beijing to retrench, warned a leading Peking Univesity finance professor.
Michael Pettis, who’s also a senior fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center, cautioned on Twitter that demand for raw materials from Africa and other Global South regions could soften dramatically if the Chinese government is forced to divert significant sums of money away from infrastructure development to clean up the Evergrande mess.