China banking crisis inevitable: Andy Xie

When the property market busts, which it will, Chinese banks will see non-performing loans zoom to 20%, forcing a Chinese TARP.

In a stark column in the South China Morning Post this morning, famed ex Morgan Stanley Banker Andy Xie said that the Chinese regulator needs to increase minimum capital requirements for banks now or face disaster when the property market crashes.

China, which sets its core capital ratio at 5%, must increase it to 8%, argues Xie, who argues that the "current capital base could be far from sufficient to cushion the losses from NPL's", which reached 40% during the last financial crisis.

The problem is this time China's banks are much bigger and a lot of foreign investors have pumped in Capital, which could make for a tricky fallout when the day of reckoning comes.