China’s urban construction investment bond: Contextualising a financial tool for local government

•It contextualises the UCIB as neglected species of local government debt.•It decomposes the UCIB into a spatial layer and a financial level relative risk factor.•It highlights that the UCIB plays a strategically important role as a bridge between China’s emerging capital market and the development of the real economy. This paper examines the Urban Construction Investment Bond (UCIB) as a tradable product in the financial market and a financial tool for local government in China. The development of this financial product is contextualised in infrastructure finance and local government debt. The creation of UCIB helps finance infrastructure investment and potentially reveal the relative risks through the secondary market. The spatial distribution of UCIB demonstrates different relative risks of this financial instrument in local conditions. The government uses this financial tool to bridge the emerging capital market and infrastructure finance, and the Chinese financial market now treats UCIB as an emerging asset class. The development of UCIB has sped up the pace of financialisation in China. Although relative risks help investors choose different UCIBs, the overall risk of UCIB cannot be ignored.