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.
Remember when they solved poverty? That was great.
Can’t have millions living in poverty if they’ve all died from the famine!
taps head
According to the World Bank, the PRC lifted 800 million people out of poverty, which is eight times higher than the number of civilian deaths the “Black Book of Communism” assigns to all Communist counties, which itself is widely considered overblown, including by several coauthors.
What do you mean?