ASSESSMENTS

China's Economic Reforms Get Another Chance

Oct 18, 2017 | 09:00 GMT

For years, China has tried to better balance the wealth in Qingdao and other coastal areas with inland areas that have languished.

Heavy fog covers buildings in Qingdao, on the coast in Shandong province. Part of the imbalance in Chinese socio-economic conditions stems from the relative wealth of the country's coastal areas compared with its inland provinces.

(STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Editor's Note

The 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress runs Oct. 18-24. The convention marks the start of a transition as delegates name new members to lead China's most powerful political institutions. But the change in personnel is only part of a larger transformation underway in the Party and in the country — a process that began long before the party congress kicked off and will continue long after it ends. This is the third installment in a four-part series examining how far China has come in its transition, and how far it has yet to go.

The global financial crisis in 2008 was the last straw for the Chinese economy. After years of rapid growth, China had finally reached the limits of its economic model, centered on exports of low-end manufactured goods. The ensuing slump revealed the glaring inequality that still divided the country's coastal regions from its inland, its wealthiest citizens from its poorest. To get back on track, Beijing would have to break with the socio-economic paradigm that it had maintained for the preceding three decades and introduce a new one. Today, the transformation is far from complete. The balanced and homogenous society the central government had imagined -- and the sustainable, consumption-based economy that would support it -- are still little more than a decadeslong dream. China's socio-economic disparities are as stark as ever, and the legacy of past growth models continues to haunt the country's economy. What's more, Beijing's attempts at change have...

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