China’s Consumers Need to Step Up
Farmers form a Chinese flag with thousands of persimmons to celebrate National Day in Shangrao, China.
Photographer: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images
China’s practice of laying out five-year economic plans is a legacy of its Maoist past. And so, as the Communist Party has done since the 1950s, officials met in Beijing in October to hash out the plan to take the world’s second-biggest but now struggling economy from 2016 to 2020.
Policymakers have two big goals. In 2016 they’ll continue to feature the consumer as the star of a hoped-for economic resurgence. They’ll also try to ensure by any means necessary that gross domestic product doesn’t slow rapidly, even if that involves injecting more credit into overleveraged, declining industries. China will target “medium-high economic growth,” the Party said in an Oct. 29 communiqué after meeting to discuss the new five-year plan.