China’s economic miracle is ending, leaving President Xi Jinping with a challenge none of his predecessors faced: how to govern after the boom.
For four decades, China’s 1.4 billion population experienced unparalleled gains in income and wealth. But recently the blows have just kept coming. Real estate collapse, trade war with the US, a crackdown on entrepreneurs, and extended Covid lockdowns have stalled the prosperity engine.
Chinese incomes are still rising, but under Xi gains have been the slowest since the late 1980s. The property crisis is hammering household wealth. And the cautious opening-up of China’s society has gone into reverse too. For many people across the country, it feels like a different world.
Take for example Mr. Hu, a factory worker in Shanghai. For almost a decade after moving from his hometown, Hu was upwardly mobile. He earned enough to buy a car, drove passengers at the weekend to top up the family income, and in 2020 bought a big-city apartment. Hu felt good about the future. Now he feels “desperate.”
Read it all.Unlike his reform-era predecessors, Xi Jinping can’t count on rapid gains in prosperity to underpin support for Communist Party rule in China https://t.co/xAj5ruyMbw
— Bloomberg Economics (@economics) May 22, 2024