Not since 1999 have China's companies had so much trouble getting customers to actually pay for what they've bought. It now takes about 83 days for the typical Chinese firm to collect cash for completed sales, almost twice as long as emerging-market peers. As payment delays spread from the industrial sector to technology and consumer companies, accounts receivable at the nation's public firms have swelled by 23 per cent over the past two years to about $590 billion ($777 billion), exceeding the annual economic output of Taiwan. The raft of unpaid bills -- bigger than at any time since former Premier Zhu Rongji shuttered thousands of ... READ MORE
