The Big Picture

Vincent Boland: After 40 years of freakish growth, China’s economy is at a crossroads

Recent actions by Xi Jinping’s government, including its strict Covid lockdown in Shanghai, have sowed doubt about the sustainability of the ‘party-state capitalism’ model

Chinese president Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, appears to want to reduce China’s dependence on foreign goods and to pursue a policy of ‘common prosperity’. But his methods are heavy-handed

Shanghai seems like a ghost city these days. The 25 million residents of the great metropolis on China’s east coast have been under what amounts to house arrest for the past few weeks after the Chinese authorities, true to their instinct for control, decided that the best way to fight Covid-19 was not to manage the virus but to defeat it.

This policy of “zero Covid” has led to the almost total isolation of Shanghai ...