The state’s investment in bank restructuring was immense. The total cost to the Chinese taxpayer of bank reform was an estimated $620 billion, equal to about 28 per cent of Chinese economic output in 2005, and becomes even greater once capital injections announced in 2008 are taken into account. To put that into perspective, the Bush administration’s highly contested financial rescue plan in late 2008, known as TARP, also cost $700 billion, but was much smaller in relative terms, equal to about 5 per cent of GDP that year.
