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Opinion
How likely is Beijing to walk the talk on boosting consumption?
As long as external demand holds up, policymakers appear relatively untroubled by weakening domestic demand, despite rhetoric to the contrary
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Wang Xiangwei is a senior visiting scholar (2026-27) at the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, Harvard Kennedy School, and a former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post.
Chinese officials tend to report only good news and bury bad news for propaganda purposes and career advancement. That is why it came as a genuine surprise when, on July 22, Zhang Enhui, the party chief of Changchun, an industrial powerhouse known for its automobile sector and technological research, publicly broke with that tradition. He warned of “unprecedented difficulties and challenges” facing the city’s economy.
The remark was apparently swiftly scrubbed from the city government’s website, but the fleeting moment of candour was telling. It comes amid a nationwide debate on whether China’s second‑quarter gross domestic product growth (GDP) slowdown is a temporary dip or the beginning of a more persistent trend. The discussion has also reignited long-standing calls for Beijing to do more to rebalance the economy by stimulating domestic consumption and reviving the troubled real estate sector.
Complicating matters further is the looming start of China’s once‑every‑five‑years leadership reshuffle, which typically induces caution among officials at all levels. This political cycle tends to dampen risk‑taking and policy experimentation – factors that inevitably shape economic decision‑making.
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