Coins, paper money, or maybe even a piggy bank may have popped into your head. Like money, debt only exists because society decides to give it collective value. What characterizes good debt from bad debt is how much interest one can make from it over time, and if (in theory) the loan can be repaid down the line. You can see in the graph below how China’s paper money (M0) was pretty stable in the given time period. The financial system’s total amount of money and financial transactions (M2) rose accordingly as well.

Source: Forbes November 23, 2017 10:30 UTC