Jeff Snider

An unprecedented shakeup at the very top of the Chinese military has shaken up the rest of the world. Xi Jinping didn’t just go after a longtime friend and ally, he has gone after everyone in what increasingly looks like a paranoid, Stalinist shakeup. But why? I’ve told you many times before about the economic pressure on China that has only intensified more recently. But that’s not the only thing.

Today we’re going be unpacking the latest from closely watched indicators out of China: bank lending data, household credit, the movement of the yuan, and what a single real estate developer—China Vanke—tells us about debt and payments right now. Bank lending in 2025 fell to the lowest since 2018 largely because household lending utterly collapsed. Yes, it collapsed last year.

The Japanese yen keeps tumbling and as it does it is tanking the bond market over there. What we have is the first case of a currency value setting interest rates, with, of course, the Bank of Japan helplessly caught in the middle. That helplessness is reinforced by the fact Japan’s currency is being closely paralleled by South Korea’s and others across Asia. The tumbling won and yen have led to government calls for stringent action, including from Treasury Secretary Bessent today.