As Chinese leader Xi Jinping kicks off his third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with Beijing reeling under economic stress due to the real estate crisis and zero-Covid policy, deeply affecting its manufacturing units.
Niels Graham, an assistant director at the GeoEconomics Center, writing in Atlantic Council said that the decisions he makes during this third term risk reducing the Chinese economy by as much as five trillion dollars over the next five years, with potentially devastating effects for global growth.
The economy that greets him today is vastly different from the one that saw him ascend to his role a decade ago. When Xi became China’s leader in 2012, he inherited a nation of newfound wealth growing rapidly. Expanding at an average pace of around 7 per cent a year, the Chinese economy nearly doubled in size over the course of Xi’s first two terms. Now, the situation is markedly different. For the first time since 1989, China will miss its annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth target, said Graham. Officially, Beijing points to the sweeping Covid-19 restrictions it has implemented across the country to explain the slowdown, reported Atlantic Council.