Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first major reform plans a decade ago were also his boldest, envisaging a transition to a Western-style free market economy driven by services and consumption by 2020.

The 60-point agenda was meant to fix an obsolete growth model better suited to less developed countries - however, most of those reforms have gone nowhere leaving the economy largely reliant on older policies that have only added to China’s massive debt pile and industrial overcapacity.

The failure to restructure the world’s second-largest economy has raised critical questions about what comes next for China.

While many analysts see a slow drift towards Japan-style stagnation as the most likely outcome, there is also the prospect of a more severe crunch.

  • @slackassassin
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    4210 months ago

    Are you really saying that you don’t think that the Chinese people have culture? Because that seems like a very strange thing to add to the economic discussion and is a pretty silly belief to hold.

    • @[email protected]
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      710 months ago

      I would go as far to say that china doesn’t have a unified culture as they like to present. I don’t think that’s what op was probably talking about, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

      China likes to present itself as a body that’s been unified for thousands of years under Han guidance. In reality the Han have only historically controlled eastern and central china.

      Since the revolution the Han have practiced a campaign of cultural imperialism against minority groups left in the country. Replacing and co-opting history and people with more han expansionism.

      • @slackassassin
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        310 months ago

        Sure, perhaps I was reading too far into the “all of” culture part, meaning that they have none. I didn’t get the feeling that it was stated with nuance, but I could be wrong, and I see the point you’re making.

        People say this about the US, too. Either that there is no culture or that it is merely McDonald’s, Marvel movies, and pop music etc.

        When in reality it is a huge country with many regional characteristics, and it’s similarly silly to think people don’t create an enriched culture there. And that was the vibe I got from op, anyway.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          Yeah not what I was getting from op either.

          I think the biggest difference between the culture of China and the US is how we think about cultural domination. America tends create culture via a competition and fusion of ideologies. This can be reflected in new styles of arts from an amalgamation of cultures. It can also be a conglomeration of some of our worst tendencies, really it’s kinda a mixed bag.

          China’s culture is dictated by the Han, and enforced by the state apparatus. There is no blending of cultures, china is for the Han. Everyone else will be broken up and replaced by state sponsored han migrants.

      • xep
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        210 months ago

        The CCP certainly tried to remove as much of it as they could in the Cultural Revolution, burning books, destroying cultural relics, and prosecuting intellectuals.