PANews reported on January 9 that at the "Boao Forum for Asia New Year Outlook 2025" event, Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People's Bank of China, said that the world will face profound changes and challenges in 2025: the international environment will continue to be full of uncertainty, competition among major powers will intensify, and economic globalization will be frustrated; the recovery of the world economy is unpredictable, and the industrial chain will be forced to reshape due to the "decoupling and disconnection" of trade and technology; the rapid development of general artificial intelligence brings opportunities and risks; the climate change crisis intensifies, and sustainable development faces huge challenges. At the same time, he emphasized that there are several major changes that will not change in 2025: the trend of accelerated growth of the global South countries will not change, the direction of Asian countries to promote inclusive economic globalization will not change, and China's determination to reform and open up will not change.
Zhou Xiaochuan pointed out in his speech that the global public debt is about to exceed 100 trillion US dollars, which will increase the external financing costs and exchange rate depreciation pressure of emerging markets and developing countries, and the debt will bring challenges to the fiscal sustainability of developed countries. We need to be vigilant about the impact of digital encrypted assets on global financial stability and financial security.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wrote in its October 2024 Fiscal Monitor that global public debt is already at a very high level (the size of US debt has exceeded $36 trillion). By the end of this year (2024), the size of global public debt is expected to exceed $100 trillion (93% of global GDP); by 2030, it will be close to 100% of GDP. This is 10 percentage points higher than the ratio in 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).
