You need to do more research. Corporate debt in the USA peaked in 2008-2009 at ~200%.

The most recent figure I could find for US corporate debt is $51 trillion: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/crexit-warning-as-corporate-d...

The USA's most recent GDP is $16.7T, so slightly over 300%.

Do you have some other figure?

That's global corporate debt. Half that article is about China's ballooning corporate debt load.

Regardless of what the numbers are, I'd still like to hear what your point was. You said you weren't surprised given that corporate debt to dbp = 250%. Is that some special number at which you can predict these kind of things happen?

In most economies this is indicative of a looming credit crisis. The best (almost up to date) summary I've read was http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/09/18/bis-flashes-r... .

@rahrahrah;

The title of the submission is "China has eclipsed US in AI, robotics and VC funding". The author of the article is using levels of investment to further his/her point about the relative superiority of two countries in AI, while completely ignoring the macroeconomic backdrop that are largely the drivers of these statistics in the first place.

Oh, and I think you're assuming I'm an American, which I'm not.

Ok so there's a looming credit crisis. How do you go from that to the implication "China is the new world power in AI, doesn't surprise me because of their corporate debt". What?

It seems to me that someone said something good about China and you snapped back by saying something bad. It's just your emotions talking.

From your article:

  Corporate debt alone has reached 171pc of GDP

Amusing that we both misread our own source articles...

Wow, I totally failed to grok that. Right you are. I'll edit my comment.