The liquidity crisis at Chinese firms started when the government introduced a new policy that limited the debt that they could take to fund new projects. The only problem was that the companies, with massive capital tied in illiquid assets, had relied on raising more debt to pay off earlier debt, relying on the age-old mantra of being 'too big to fail'. A failure at Evergrande threatened to disrupt Western financial markets as well, as large firms such as BlackRock had bought millions of dollars of its debt.