China must act quickly to address mounting corporate debt, a major source of worry about the world's second-largest economy, a senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said on Saturday.
David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the IMF, warned in a speech to a group of economists in the southern city of Shenzhen that companies' indebtedness is a "key fault line in the Chinese economy."
"Company debt problems today can become systemic debt problems tomorrow. Systemic debt problems can lead to much lower economic growth, or a banking crisis. Or both," Lipton said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks provided to Reuters.