cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/40426531

The technological and strategic brilliance of the country's world-class companies are being swamped by macroeconomic troubles.

Op-ed by George Magnus, research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre and at Soas University of London, UK.

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Common concerns about coercive politics and human rights aside, some notions of China as an unstoppable economic, technological and military behemoth sit alongside others focused more on an increasingly sclerotic, over- centralised political economy, that depends on wasteful economic stimulus, and features poor governance and institutions. The fusion of these notions suggests that we may already have reached “peak China”.

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At the Central Economic Work Conference in December last year, China’s premier, Li Qiang, summarised his country’s condition by saying candidly that the foundation for sustained economic recovery and growth was not strong, demand was weak, and there were pressures on job creation and “fiscal difficulties” among several local governments.

Although consumption has been made a top priority, actual policy measures to make it so have been underwhelming, partly because redistributing economic power to companies and citizens also entails changes in political power, which are anathema to the Communist party.

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The super-globalisation from which China benefited is pretty much over, and the world’s biggest export nation is now confronted by a fragmenting and fracturing trade and investment environment in which commerce within blocs is holding up better than trade between them.

China’s bloc includes a majority of the world’s population, but very small proportions of world GDP, investment and wealth. At the same time, developed and middle-income economies, as well as emerging nations, are pushing back against what they perceive to be predatory trade policies by a mercantilist China.

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