RMB 123.96 Billion, Then Nothing: One Line Vanished From China's Payment Report

Every year China’s central bank publishes a report on the operation of the payment system. It contains a section called “Bank cards.”

Here is how that section opens in the 2025 edition. As of the end of 2025 there were 10.217 billion bank cards in circulation, of which 9.521 billion were debit cards and 696 million were credit cards and combined debit-credit cards. As of the end of 2025 there were 745,700 ATMs.

The next paragraph covers transactions. In 2025 there were 614.785 billion bank card transactions worth RMB 963.60 trillion, broken out into cash deposits, cash withdrawals, transfers and purchases, each with its own count and value.

The section ends there.

Now look at the 2024 edition. Same section, same opening, but with one more paragraph after it:

As of the end of 2024, total bank card credit lines stood at RMB 22.90 trillion, up 1.04 percent year on year; outstanding bank card credit was RMB 8.71 trillion, up 0.25 percent; the average credit line per card was RMB 31,400 and the utilisation rate was 38.03 percent; credit card debt overdue by six months or more totalled RMB 123.96 billion, or 1.43 percent of outstanding credit card credit.

That paragraph is gone.

Four terms, zero hits

It did not move to another section.

Run a full-text search on the 2025 report for the Chinese terms for “credit line,” “outstanding,” “overdue” and “credit.” All four return zero hits.

Cards per person went with it. The 2024 edition told you that the average person in China held 7.04 bank cards, of which 0.52 were credit or combined cards. The 2025 edition no longer tells you.

The break is abrupt. It happens in the first quarter of 2025: the previous report still had the paragraph, the next one did not, with nothing in between.

So what survived?

How many cards exist, kept. How many ATMs, kept. How many transactions and for how much, kept, and still split four ways.

Cash withdrawals: 5.370 billion transactions, RMB 30.65 trillion. That level of detail is still there.

What survived is flow. What was removed is stock and risk.

The report carries two methodology notes. One explains how ATMs are counted. One explains how transfers by non-bank payment institutions are counted and de-duplicated.

On why credit lines, outstanding balances and overdue debt are no longer listed, there is not a word. No separate announcement was issued either.

The last figure is RMB 123.96 billion

Since it is no longer updated, RMB 123.96 billion is the most recent publicly available figure for credit card debt overdue by six months or more in China. It stops at the end of 2024.

It was rising.

At the end of 2023 the figure was RMB 98.14 billion. Within a year it reached RMB 123.96 billion, an increase of RMB 25.8 billion, or 26 percent.

The ratio was rising too. At the end of 2024, overdue debt was 1.43 percent of outstanding credit card credit, up 0.3 percentage points from a year earlier.

Over that same year, outstanding credit itself barely moved, up 0.25 percent.

The numerator rose 26 percent. The denominator rose 0.25 percent.

That is the last figure anyone can see. What it was in 2025, or in 2026, has no public answer.

”The industry has entered a new phase”

Now consider the standard account of what has been happening to credit cards in China.

Cards really are disappearing. From a peak of 807 million in the third quarter of 2022 to 687 million at the end of the first quarter of 2026 — fourteen consecutive quarters of decline, a drop of roughly 120 million cards.

The physical footprint is shrinking too. According to industry data, more than 60 credit card branch centres have closed since the start of 2025.

There is a standard explanation for this. One bank executive put it this way: the centralised, vertically managed credit card centre had advantages during the period of rapid expansion, but as the industry enters a new phase its limitations have become increasingly apparent. An industry analyst described it as organisational restructuring intended to keep pace with the credit card business transforming itself from the inside out.

Translated: this is not retreat, it is deliberate transformation, from land-grab growth to careful management of an existing book.

That explanation may well be correct.

The problem is that it can no longer be checked.

To judge whether an institution is shrinking by choice or by necessity, you look at asset quality — how much credit is drawn, how much is outstanding, how much is overdue. Those are precisely the three figures that were removed.

Which produces a clean reversal of cause and effect. Not “the numbers look healthy because the business is sound,” but “the business looks sound because only the flattering numbers are left.”

Card counts are falling, which can be told as a deliberate slimming down. Transaction values are rising, which can be told as an improving mix. Both figures are still published. Both support the account.

The one set of numbers that could contradict it is not there.

This is not a claim that was proven. It is a claim underwritten by whichever data happened to remain.

To find the bad debt, look at who is selling it

Risk does not disappear because it stops being counted. It settles somewhere else.

In August 2025 there were reports that several banks were stepping up disposals of non-performing credit card loans. These portfolios are listed publicly through the Banking Credit Asset Registry and Circulation Centre.

By media tallies, Hua Xia Bank transferred more than RMB 30 billion of non-performing credit card assets through that venue across 2025. Between November and December, China Minsheng Bank listed credit card non-performing portfolios with roughly RMB 27 billion in unpaid principal and interest.

Which leaves an awkward comparison.

The report no longer tells you the size of overdue credit card debt across the industry. But if you want a rough sense of how much bad credit card debt a particular bank is carrying, you can look at how much of it the bank put up for sale this year.

A metric leaving the statistical tables does not mean it left the market. It only moved from “published” to “look it up yourself.”

Back to that paragraph

Read the bank card section of the 2025 report once more.

10.217 billion cards. 9.521 billion debit cards. 696 million credit and combined cards. 745,700 ATMs. 614.785 billion transactions, RMB 963.60 trillion.

Not one of those numbers is wrong. The decimals check out. The four sub-categories add up.

It is a report with no errors in it.

A report with no errors and a complete report are not the same thing.

And the missing paragraph left no trace. No “temporarily withheld,” no “methodology under review,” no footnote. It is simply not there.

So the next time you read that risk is “generally under control” or that an industry is “developing healthily,” it is worth asking one question first: is the number behind that judgement still being published?

If it is not, the statement cannot be contradicted — and it cannot be confirmed either.