Can China’s Leaders Accept a Low-Growth Future?

If the lesson Beijing draws from the current economic distress is that it has steered into a blind alley and needs to back out, then after a few bad years of retooling China can once again enjoy strong and sustainable growth that crowds in domestic and foreign commercial activity, rather than scare risk-taking away. That is the same hard bargain with history that inclined Deng Xiaoping, Zhu Rongji, and other past Chinese leaders to forgo the semblance of party power and prestige in order to unleash the nation’s economic potential. Conceding the need to back away from resurgent statism and back to marketization would be a bitter political pill for Xi to swallow, but it would be easier to digest than a future that looks like 2022.

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