China’s consumer spending push faces major challenge – debt-averse households

Chinese households have accelerated deleveraging – cutting debt relative to gross domestic product – at the fastest pace in years, a shift that could weigh on the consumer spending that Beijing needs to sustain growth in the world’s second-largest economy. The household debt-to-GDP ratio fell by 2 percentage points, from 61.4 per cent in 2024 to 59.4 per cent at the end of 2025, according to data released on Monday by the National Institution for Finance and Development (NIFD), a Beijing-based...