Xi Jinping's first major economic-reform plans a decade ago were his boldest, but their failure has raised critical questions about what comes next: a slow drift toward stagnation or a more severe crunch?

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first major reform plans a decade ago were also his boldest, envisaging a transition to a Western-style free market economy driven by services and consumption by 2020.

The 60-point agenda was meant to fix an obsolete growth model better suited to less developed countries - however, most of those reforms have gone nowhere leaving the economy largely reliant on older policies that have only added to China’s massive debt pile and industrial overcapacity.

The failure to restructure the world’s second-largest economy has raised critical questions about what comes next for China.

While many analysts see a slow drift towards Japan-style stagnation as the most likely outcome, there is also the prospect of a more severe crunch.

  • iainEnglish
    2321·
    10 months ago

    China’s economic miracle? I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe articles that talk about miracles.

    China is both a dangerous enemy and they’re about to collapse. The enemy is both strong and weak. Umberto Eco called that one of the characteristics of fascism.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      10 months ago

      Why does this have so many downvotes? We do sound like fascists talking about China like they are somehow both on the verge of collapse and our greatest threat. Yet they produce all our shit.

      • iainEnglish
        86·
        10 months ago

        I am not defending China, just pointing out a crappy argument.

        We’re becoming more and more fascist in the west, with politicians like Trump, DeSantis and so on. This article from Reuters is part of this shift to the right and that’s why I’m pointing it out. Fascism is a bigger risk to our way of life than China is.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      Umberto Eco’s list of fascist characteristics are applied to how they view themselves, not how others view them. Strength is dependent on many things to help maintain that strength and weakness is antithetical - a thing cannot be weak and strong by the same metric. You calling them both weak and strong is fascist, it isn’t true because you’re using different metrics to measure different parts of China.

      • iainEnglish
        42·
        10 months ago

        A thing can’t be weak and strong by the same metric, indeed. That’s why this article has to call China’s economical strength a miracle, as well as so weak it is about to collapse, otherwise the contradiction would be too obvious.