The country’s economic slowdown is not just a natural plateau, or the unwinding of massive debt. It’s a deliberate choice to put ideology ahead of even economic growth.
Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, economic growth has mattered more than anything for China’s leaders. The 10 per cent annualised hyper-growth from 1980 to 2010 was widely seen as the antidote to the relative stasis of the Mao era, when the economy grew by only about 6 per cent.
But under President Xi Jinping, the pendulum has swung back, with 6.6 per cent average growth from 2013 to 2021, much closer to the trajectory under Mao than under Deng.
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Stephen S. Roach is a faculty member at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.
