China's central government has rolled out a new round of measures since the second half of last year to help local governments swap or restructure their off-the-books borrowing in a bid to control debt risk.
However, the sheer scale of the country's local government hidden debt -- up to more than 70 trillion yuan ($9.8 trillion), according to some estimates, which is over twice Germany's GDP -- means that the measures at best are far from adequate and will provide only temporary relief to what experts say is a looming liquidity crisis for regional authorities.
