Edit: The difference is when China bails out its banks it doesn't loan the money into existence to do it. The U.S government must borrow the money from the fed and the interest rate is paid back by the taxpayers. Yes, the interest paid back to the fed goes back to the government, minus expenses. However, those with very large amounts of money, trillions in aggregate, can piggyback on this system and earn enormous risk free returns where they would otherwise have to carefully invest in non-risk free instruments. These risk free assets are unavailable to chinese investors forcing these large savings into various productive (or non-productive based on their investing skill) investments in the economy. They can't go into T-Bills either because of strict currency controls. In the U.S the risk-free trillions invested are guaranteed by the power of taxation of the rest of the productive economy. This austerity to pay the bondholders and ensuing liquidation is what trashes the rest of the economy on a regular basis in Western economies. This doesn't happen in China because the banks get bailed out with printed money and they keep on lending without putting the government in debt or requiring taxes to be raised or austerity.

That China has not had a Japanese style prolonged credit bust even though it has been predicted by "The Economist" and other supposedly learned publications on a regular basis for the last 30 years is a sublime mystery that defines explanation because there is a stubborn refusal to objectively understand and analyze the Chinese financial system. I'd say it's a new paradigm in human organization that really defies western understanding because our financial system is so enormously politically protected by all that trillions in passive capital that gets risk free returns.