Xi Jinping’s Failed Promises Dim Hopes for Economic Change in 2nd Term
"Without stable market conditions, no reform can make progress, and there may even be reversal of the strides
that we’ve made." But even many who accept China’s model of gradual, government-guided reform say that under Mr. Xi, promised changes have stalled or been reversed.
Wu Jinglian, one of China’s most prominent economists, said at a recent meeting in Beijing
that "the direction of reform laid out in these documents is clear, and the measures are right, but the problem has been implementation." "Putting it relatively tactfully," he continued, "it hasn’t been vigorous enough." Economists abroad have been less tactful.
Mr. Xi, who dominates economic policy and much else besides, has flinched from the harder changes needed for long-term prosperity
and has yet to find a way to keep the economy growing without administering ever larger injections of debt.
"People expect faster, radical reform after the party congress" late this year, when Mr. Xi starts a second term as party leader.
"We’ve maybe issued over a hundred of these reform documents," he added, "but which ones have really been implemented,
including fiscal reforms?" Business leaders say more should be done to lighten their burdens.
And I don’t expect his instincts or those challenges to change much." Many economists, executives
and policy advisers in Beijing do not disguise their disappointment about what has happened to Mr. Xi’s promises of an audacious overhaul of the economy.
