China’s central bank has embarked on unprecedented measures to stabilise the country’s cratering stock market in recent days, in what some are calling quantitative easing with Chinese characteristics.
Yet analysts say China’s action more closely resembles emergency actions used by western central banks to stabilise credit markets at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, and differs significantly from the extended bond-buying programmes subsequently rolled out to stimulate the real economy.
At the height of the crisis, the US Federal Reserve created new lending facilities allowing banks to use mortgage-backed securities and other “toxic assets” as collateral at a time when normal demand for these assets had collapsed.