China's total debt, at a record level

China's total debt has increased to a record level of 237% of the GDP in the first quarter of 2016, far exceeding the level reached by other emerging countries, which increases the risk of a financial crisis or of the extended slowdown of the country's economy, according to the warnings launched by analysts.

British publication Financial Times (FT) writes that Beijing has resorted to major loans to boost its economic growth, feeding the net debt, which reached 163,000 billion Yuan (25,000 billion dollars) at the end of March. The amount also includes internal borrowing, as well as the foreign ones.

FT notes that even though China's debt generates fears, more worrisome is the speed it has been accrued at. If it has now reached 237% of the GDP, at the end of 2007, China's debt was 148% of the GDP.

"Every major country that has rapid increases in debt has faced either a financial crisis, or an extended slowdown of the growth of the GDP", says Ha Jiming, chief investment strategist at "Goldman Sachs".

The IMF has recently warned that the Asian country is posing an increasingly higher risk to the developed economies, due to the size of its debt and the ties it has with the global financial marketing.

According to specialists, it is difficult for any economy to productively use such a volume of capital over the short term, due to the limited number of profitable projects.

As the investments' returns decrease, even more loans are at risk of becoming non-performing, according to FT.

Economists feel that China's health is at risk, but their opinions on the country's future vary.

One of the extreme scenarios is an acute crisis - a "Lehman" moment which will resemble the one in the US in 2008, when that bank collapsed, and other lenders crashed, paralyzing the market. Other economists estimate a chronic slump in China, as has been happening in Japan, where economic growth has been stagnant for years.