Finding a way out of local debt

It is not a publicity campaign. And in China, officials doing something without an accompanying publicity campaign often means the activity is still of an experimental nature.

But recent developments suggest that China appears to be edging toward a possible solution to the more than 1 trillion yuan ($1,610 billion) of debt that local governments have accumulated during the financial stimulus round of five to six years ago.

So much debt, and the ill-advised borrowings from which it was incurred, are considered a problem of the stimulus program back then, which was doled out in haste to mitigate the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis.