“For the rest of the year, everything will be carefully managed and manicured. The 20th Congress is just too important.”
George Magnus – referring here to an upcoming November 2022 meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, where president Xi Jinping should be anointed president for an unprecedented third term in office – knows China better than most.
A former chief economist for UBS Investment Bank, Magnus is also an associate at Oxford University’s China Centre and author of ‘Red flags: Why Xi’s China is in jeopardy’.
In normal conditions, Magnus’s assessment would be a dead cert.
Xi is setting himself up as president-for-life, Magnus says, which means there must be no nasty surprises in the months ahead. So no pandemic spikes in big rich cities or the poor hinterland; no growth fears or bank runs; no social instability; and absolutely no flirting with recession.
Oh, hang on a minute.
Actually, China faces all those issues in capital letters – and more besides.
Amid the myriad problems facing developed nations – from slow growth to high prices to supply-chain bottlenecks – China’s economic woes have largely gone unnoticed.
