Professional Affiliation

Former Fellow; Banking and Financial Markets Analysis, Enodo Economics

Expert Bio

Dinny McMahon spent two years in Beijing and Kunming learning Chinese before spending a year at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center campus of Johns Hopkins to study international relations. After that he wrote for Dow Jones Newswires in Shanghai, where he also contributed to the Far Eastern Economic Review, before moving to Beijing with the Wall Street Journal.

He wrote China’s Great Wall of Debt while in residence at the Kissinger Institute in Washington. Afterwards, he moved on to a fellowship at MacroPolo, the Paulson Institute’s think tank in Chicago, where he researched China’s efforts to clean up its financial system.

Dinny has a double degree from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, majoring in economics and Chinese.

Wilson Center Project

"Cracks in the Façade: The Mounting Risk and Complexity of China’s Financial System"

Project Summary

Since the global financial crisis, China's financial system has ballooned in size, complexity and risk. Once dominated by four banks, the system has become a tangle of shadow banking, informal financial institutions and complex corporate funding arrangements that threaten growth, economic stability and reform efforts. This project looks to explain the on-the-ground workings of the country's financial system, how it has contributed to China's rapid growth, and the challenges the country now faces as it tries to harness urbanization and SOE reform as alternative drivers of the economy.