Is China’s Debt Bomb About to Explode—and What Does It Mean for the Yuan and Global Markets?

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Is China’s Debt Bomb About to Explode, and What Is the Impact on Global Markets?

September 23, 2025 Clark Savage

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

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Michael Tanner: [00:00:00] Is China’s debt bomb about to explode, and what does this mean for the yuan and global markets? Next, on the Energy Newsbeat standup. [00:00:07][7.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:15] Is China’s debt bomb about to explode? And what is the impact on global markets? Holy cow, Batman, in a stark admission during a September 25 press conference, China’s finance minister revealed that every penny we spend is borrowed, highlighting the precarious state of the nation. Michael, let’s go through some GDP debt ratios. Compared to other economies, China’s debt to GDP ratio is about 312% in 2024, the US is currently 123% and Japan is 255%. Holy cow, Batman, the yuan is in trouble. China’s debt crisis isn’t new, but in new data points, dire picture by mid 2025, social financing and broad measure of credit in the economy stood at $430 trillion won fueled by aggressive borrowing to stay growth. This is also including all of the bankruptcies that they’ve had. They’ve had a horrific real estate plummet at 8.5 in 2024, crippling over 70 different related industries. They are having a rut’s a ruck in China, so to speak. [00:01:33][78.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:33] Yeah, it’s really interesting here, you know, a lot of this debt, as you mentioned in the article, kind of roots back and traces back to their infrastructure boom that they have, the real estate speculation, a lot of the stimulus that they decided to do post 2008 financial crisis. You note an interesting fact in here, local Chinese governments are barred from direct borrowing. So they can’t actually borrow money, which basically relies on these debt instruments that come from the government. Now, the issue is a lot of this debt is bad. So there’s this concept of, as you’ve noted here, extend and pretend strategy where this new debt that they get issued refinances the old debt. That’s right. Very interesting. Very, very interesting. Very, very interesting. [00:02:15][41.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:16] Only the big guy, only the main guys can extend debt and pretend to be in control. [00:02:20][4.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:21] So then my question for you is, Stu, what does this mean in the war against the dollar? Because everybody was saying that the yuan is going to take over the dollar in the near future, but this article seems to point that, eh, not so fast. [00:02:35][13.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:35] Not so fast they are just as bad as the US and Japan the three biggest ones when you sit back and take a look three monkeys in a bathtub trying to scratch each other’s back. That’s the horrible part about this thing. All of us have fleas and we’re trying to pick the fleas off of us. This is not a good situation to be in and I believe that if the United States can get rid of the Fed and go to a gold or silver standard and have actual everything go back to gold, we will heal as a global economy. [00:03:09][33.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:10] Yeah, it’s, it really is true. I find it fascinating that, that people are making this and, and I think, you know, again, what does this mean for the energy markets? You know, this quote unquote, their push for clean energy over there in China isn’t really going to help because if they’re going to need debt to continue to do that, their net zero goals are going to continue to be delayed. So anyone who’s thinking that China is going to become the leader in net zero, good luck. [00:03:34][24.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:34] No, they’re putting out two coal plants a month and the only reason that they are not broke is because they printed all the money they can. Let’s go to the next story here, Michael. ExxonMobil seeks to recover billions lost in Saklan’s first exit. Is this the first step toward ending the Ukraine war? And Michael, this is very a low. Key article. You’ve heard me say that the only way that President Trump is going to get President Putin to the talking to the table is by a business deal. Well, Exxon Mobil said they’re not going to be participant as energy as an export as a service unless they get reparations or paid back billions. So they’re in talks getting their billions back and I’m like this could this is really, really exciting. They may be able to start working on Saklin again, because in the bigger picture, right now Russia does not have the extra capacity to do any increasing in oil, which is going to affect the markets. To recap, ExxonMobil held a 30% operating stake in the Saklin-1 project, a massive oil and gas development of Far East Coast, pre-war production around 220,000 barrels per day so when you sit back and take a look This is a precursor to ending the war in my opinion, if it is done correctly, and we can quit listening to the cotton picking warmongers. If you’re a warmonger in congress, Shut up, check out, clock out, and go home. [00:05:13][98.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:13] I’m not sure we know where you stand on that. So we may have to hold another segment to figure out exactly where you stand on, that I do find again, to kind of follow up with that Exxon mobile CEO, Darren Woods, you know, while he that there are ongoing talks between the Russian officials and his company he made it very clear quote we have no plans to re-enter Russia so they’re mainly just looking for their capital back and not necessarily to re in Russia so yeah maybe it’s a preempt to end of the war I think Exxon is just doing what it’s best for Exxson and the shareholders so if there’s even if there’s a bridge being built here great do I see it happening yeah probably not [00:05:48][34.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:49] No, but I’m hopeful. And let’s go to the next story. Oil jumps as Trump pushes Europe to stop an all-energy purchase. Michael, I have not laughed so hard. You have got to read our Substack article that I put out with Trump’s talking to the UN. Y’all, green energy is catastrophic and y’all are bad. You’re gonna die and you’re gonna be totally bankrupt if you go to green energy. That’s about as bad as- Trump impression as I can do. Green energy is crap. I mean, this is absolutely the most funny thing I have ever seen in my life. It was fantastic. When you go through, energy is in an era when the United States is now thriving like never before, AI is green and all bankrupt. Y’all are losers. I’m a winner. I think if I just busted out laughing at the whole thing was absolutely hilarious. But the geopolitical fallout out of this is he basically said you all need to stop using Russian oil and gas. And currently they use 17 to 18 percent of the EU uses Russian natural gas right now. So he’s not going to put extra sanctions on until they get to that point. But Michael, I did a crayon and that extra 17% will put Germany the EU. Bankrupt. That extra 17% will bankrupt the EU. That is how close to bankruptcy they are. Can I make myself clear? They can’t get off Russian oil and Russian natural gas. [00:07:28][99.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:29] No, they, well, they can’t because at the end of the day, people wanna have air conditioning, they wanna have their lights on. They, the more modernized you get as an economy, the more oil and gas and energy you need to spend. So I think it’s funny, I mean, selflessly, I think Trump is trying to prop up the LNG markets. I think he understands and is starting to get a sense of the drill baby drill. Is great, it’s going to lower energy costs, but then you’ve got to figure out a way to make your domestic energy business profitable, because if it’s not profitable, you’re going to keep going in this cycle of production drops, oil prices, then spike back up and you go in this cyclical circle. And he wants low cost energy 24-7, which is probably better off from the nuclear space. So I do find it interesting. I think, again, not that this needs to be said, but I mean, a lot of what he’s talking about this is. US focused political gesturing in order to make sure that the industries that he wants to thrive thrive and that’s of course what he Wants to do it is you know I think you are right in the fact that Europe’s not gonna get cut up or they’re not gonna stop buying Russian oil or Russian gas They can’t because it’s just so close. It’s so cheap We will never be able to compete economically with what Russia can service the war Europe to so the real question Is what sort of happens from here and how to maybe we we sort of figure out how to solve all that [00:08:44][75.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:45] But what you’re missing is the Siberia 2 pipeline will be absorbing that 17% and taking it to Asia and they have less than three years in order to get off Russian oil and gasoline period. And they have, they are not going to make it. It is not look good for the EU. Let’s go to the next story. Texas ERCOT was okay this summer, but are we ready for winter? Are we wrong to ask? This one was actually from Doug Sheridan on LinkedIn and I absolutely love Doug Sheriden. Last month we came across a series of charts at Grids and the Status, how this continual generation of ERCot for the 30 days, and he goes through there and he starts describing, Michael let me just give you a brief description. He describes the flow during the summer, our night time peak hour it stands at Urquhart would have about 85 gigawatt of gross thermal dispatchable generation and in addition to whatever generation there was from 40 gigawat of gross wind capacity to call on during that window and he starts going through and he does the math and the math thing and he figures out wait a minute if this was winter it would not work because we don’t normally have the wind in the winter so all of a sudden Doug’s Right, we’ve had some real problems. Has ERCOT fixed the bad winter problems in the storm? Man, this was a great artifice. [00:10:12][87.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:13] No, it’s a great article. I don’t know if I have much to add other than I think my response is, no, I don’t think it’s clear you read this article. I don’t think they fixed it. So let’s, let’s hope it doesn’t get cold. But the real question is, could we, could we handle a storm like that? Winter storm, Yuri probably not. I love, I love. You know, I, I loved this, this thing you put at the end. Are we wrong to ask this question? No, I don’t think we’re wrong. [00:10:36][23.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:36] Alright, let’s go to this last story here. Russia’s crude flow hits a 16-month high on output, rising output and attacks. Russia seaborne crude exports have surged to their highest levels in a year, driven by combinations of increased production and disruptions to domestic refining capacity from Ukrainian drone strikes. According to recent vessel tracking data, the four-week average shipments. 3.62 million barrels per day in the ending September 21, the export surge. The bottom line is I think they’re at their max. They, I don’t see them, even though they’ve got a production increased in OPEC plus coming that they’re going to be able to do, I think that they are doing everything that they can and producing everything that they can, so I don’t see any more coming. [00:11:24][48.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:25] Yeah, no. I don’t see it. I don’t necessarily see it either. You know, again, it’s clear. We’re just going to say it again. Sanctions don’t work. Because clearly they keep flowing through. And I think partly why it’s Trump now saying, well, we just need to boycott them. Just boycott him. I mean, that’s all he’s got now at this point is just to say, let’s boycott. We know the sanctions don’t work, just please don’t buy, please. [00:11:48][23.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:49] Well, and Trump is smart and here’s where he is getting played. I’m going to say this before, I was going to save this later, but there’s two articles on energy newsbeat, one from Andrew Corbett chose Corio book, Corio Book was newsletter on Substack. And another one that I wrote, Trump just gave the green light for World War three. I didn’t write it. I just picked that up from somebody else. I am very saddened by Trump being played by Zelensky and president Trump, you’re better man than Zelensky. Please stop listening to Zelenski. Stop listening to Lindsey Graham. They are not winning the war. Do your research. Listen to Lieutenant General Flynn. Thank you. Is he supposed to go on the podcast at some point? Yeah, he was. Thank you for bringing that painful moment up. This is the fourth time that he’s had to be canceled off again, and I appreciate that. [00:12:43][54.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:43] We’re waiting bait of breath for that one. No, I do, I mean, not to, you know, before we got to jump to finance here, but I do find it interesting that Trump comes out yesterday in what I thought was a great speech at the UN up until he decides to say, no, I think Ukraine can take all the territory back. What? I mean that, that, you, you now, he, I, I mean, it’s it’s [00:13:03][19.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:03] No, Ukraine has, President Zelensky has been sold out and he has become a dictator. He’s canceled the elections. He is personally responsible for millions of people dying. President Zelinsky, go away. [00:13:19][16.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:21] All right, well, let’s jump over here and quickly cover some stuff in oil and gas finance guys before we do that Let’s quickly pay the bills as always. Thank you for checking us out here world’s greatest website www.energynewsbeat.com hit the links in the description below all links to the timestamps links to the articles and Subscribe to our sub stack the energy newsbeat.substack.com Please please great way to subscribe the energynews beat.sub stack.com Shout out to friends of the show Reese energy consulting Stu’s rockin a signed hat by the therefore mentioned Steve Reese, the man, the myth, the legend himself, we love everything about them. Guys, they are the foremost midstream experts with literally thousands of years of experience in their roster. If you need help at all, if anything in the midstream space. Call them reeseenergyconsulting.com. We appreciate them supporting the show. And finally, guys, invest in oil.energynewsbeat.com It’s coming at that time, guys. Do not give your money to the government. Invest in something that helps America gain energy independence. Invest in somebody that will diversify your portfolio. Invest in someone that will lower your energy burden. And invest in somebody that will come on the podcast. Not General Flint, no, I’m just kidding. Invest in oil and gas, guys is a great way to lower your tax deduction, lower and diversify you portfolio, and get in on… The oil and gas businesses support America. Everyone’s like, I want to lower my taxes. I’m going to donate to charity. Don’t get me wrong, I love charity. But at some point, you don’t get any distributions from charity. And quite frankly, most charities just pocket the money anyway. What does the Red Cross send out 5% of the money or something that they take in? So don’t spend money on admin fees. You don’t need to be supporting DEI movements within the American Red Cross. What you do need to supporting is the American Energy InvestInOil.EnergyNewsBeat.com. [00:15:00][98.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:03] Stu, prices from an oil jump today, really. We had a really surprise draw from the US crude oil inventory report. We saw about 600,000 barrels drawed, as it was expected, about an 800,000 barrel build. So that’s really what jumped crude oil prices up. Currently trading about 64.82 natural gas, down at about $2.87. But I think the sense in the short term is that there’s some tightening supply. We’ve seen some stuff going on with exports, both in Iraq, Venezuela, and Russia. Some of the three of the greatest nations in the world. Obviously, but I think it’s going to be very, very interesting. You know, Reuters forecasted, you know, about a 300 and, and, or 235 billion barrel build, but there was, it was some interesting stuff that happened. You know API yesterday did actually say there was going to be a 3.8 million barrel draw. So slightly less very interesting You know, there’s some of these draws. I think it’s really interesting. You know there’s also, you know, Ukraine going in there and striking some oil pumping units in Russia as things continue to ramp up and there’s, they actually had to declare a state of emergency in Norvo disk, which is they, a Russian major seaport in the black sea that contains a major oil and grain export terminals. So things begin to get really, really spicy. [00:16:17][73.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:18] The only other things too, that we saw this actually happened on Tuesday, Exxon goes ahead and announces and gives a final investment decision for the Hammerhead Development Project, which is the seventh development in the famed Stabroik Block in offshore Guyana. This is a $6.8 billion project, includes 18 production and injection rails, and will I’ll also include an F. PSO which stands for Floating Production Storage and Offloading Vessel with the capacity to produce 150,000 of barrels of oil per day. Pretty unbelievable, Stu. This basically increases the funds committed for the seven projects to over 60 billion dollars by ExxonMobil, which is unbelievable. You know, they note that almost 8 billion has been paid into Guyana National Research Fund since that production started in the Strobrock Block since 1920. There’s about 70 percent of the workforce is also Guyanese, which is awesome. I mean, It’s, it’s pretty unbelievable what they’ve been able to do in Guyana. They’re, they’re producing about 650,000 barrels per day right now. And they’ll continue to add to this in the beginning. So it’s a pretty, pretty unbelievable Stu. And it’s, It’s going to be a, it’ll be a great thing for them. It’s really all I saw though. I don’t know if you got anything else that we miss. Who do we got coming out on the podcast this, the end of the week? [00:17:32][74.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:32] We’ve got Trisha Curtis, CEO of the Petro Nerds coming out on Friday. Then we have several others rolling right on through. That’s great. We love Trisha. [00:17:43][10.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:42] We love Trisha Curtis. She’s awesome. Love the stuff that she’s doing over there petro nerds. We love that [00:17:47][5.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:47] He is a class act and we’ve got a bunch of other ones rolling through so buckle up and stay tuned [00:17:53][6.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:54] Well, awesome, guys. Well, we appreciate you checking us out here on the world’s greatest podcast, energy news beat. We hope you have a great weekend and thanks everybody for sticking with us. But with that, we’re going to let you get out of here, get back to work, finish up your week for Stuart Turley I’m Michael Tanner guys. We’ll see you next week. [00:17:54][0.0][1052.5]