China's rise is looking over, either from policy or the end of factors that propelled the rise.
Xi Jinping to Chinese rich people: You didn't build that:
At a recent meeting of the Central Finance and Economic Affairs Commission (CFEC), which he leads, Xi said that a relatively equal income distribution across disparate sectors of the populace and geographical areas was "an essential requirement of socialism and a key feature of Chinese-style modernization."
This revives a Maoist slogan. But Xi says China's "common prosperity" does not mean killing the rich ... yet.
Are people really unclear about the Chinese Communist Party's conviction that power grows out of the barrel of a gun? Will this policy--with other recent policies--kill, or even reverse, spectacular Chinese GDP growth?
Or is the policy a recognition that spectacular GDP growth is ending, which is a risk to the Chinese Communist Party monopoly on power?
And if this signals problems for the CCP power monopoly, what will Xi do abroad with this knowledge? I do worry that the CCP will see the pandemic--which originated in Wuhan, China where a Chinese biological laboratory with a history of lax security is--as a temporary factor that helps China now because of the chaos the lockdowns inflicted on the West.
And what do the Chinese make of our Afghanistan debacle? Surely that is a factor.
Interesting times, indeed.
