This is a very simplistic way to make the comparison here in #China.  What it is I would say for now is that Total Social Financing (TSF) includes bank loans to corporate entities and households.  So, this doesn't make an apples-to-apples comparison to the US or elsewhere in terms of relatively to GDP. 

Think of it this way.  Very little in the way of lending in China is done via capital markets (ie the bond market).  You would need, again for simplicity, to include in the US data all debt issued by all companies and all households (including mortgages) to get to a number that would be comparable to China's TSF.

But don't get me wrong.  China has an overleverage issue and addressing this issue has been priority #1 of the government over the past three years.     

 Oh for fucks sake ...... this article was written by Michael Pettis.  

He has been so colossally wrong on his #China predictions for the better part of 20 years.  

In fact, he infamously wrote a (at the time) well received op-ed in the Financial Times back in 2009 claiming that China's growth prospects were over.  Moreover, the points he made in that piece are the very exact same arguments he is making in this Carnegie article.