China needs to be more aggressive in its reforms if it wants to smoothly transition from an export-oriented economy to a services-driven one, the head of BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager, said on Tuesday. "China is struggling with excessive leverage within a lot of financial institutions," BlackRock Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said at a BlackRock forum in Hong Kong. "They need to be more aggressive in their reforms. Reforms are slower than what I would have preferred." He added there are still too many state-owned enterprises in China and that the recent "explosion in credit" is "the wrong way to reorient the economy". Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.
BlackRock 's Laurence D firm , who oversees the world ’s largest money market with $ 4.7tn of client assets , has quoted others in warning that we should all be concerned about China 's mounting debt pile . While he says he is still bullish regarding the long - term prospects of China , current slowing growth and increasing inflation are large threats to the outlook . As we previously noted , George Soros stated that the country 's debt - fueled economy was beginning to resemble the US in 2007 and 2008 .