This is a key point and why, while China has a high degree of monetary sovereignty, it is not a good example of "MMT" because they hide fiscal spending through a complex chain of public banks, SOEs and local governments rather than "on balance sheet" https://twitter.com/Brad_Setser/status/1193706343485575169 1/N

They show large measured fiscal surpluses and low levels of government securities relative to GDP but hide losses from defaulted loans on the balance sheets of public banks. An MMT informed policy which highlighted the availability of physical resources would realize 2/N

those losses, assume province and local government debt ala Hamilton and introduce national social insurance. It would lead to a large increase in measured Federal public debt but wouldn't actually increase the financial net worth or even "money holdings)of the private sector 3/N

Whether that's politically feasible is an open question,but it may be and part of the motivation to not do this is clearly neoliberal ideas about the supposed benefits of low public debt.The other point here is for all the talk of central planning, China is decentralized here 4/4