As consumers and businesses continue to hold off on spending and investment, deflationary pressures deepen, further depressing prices and economic activity.

It will require many years of real determination by Beijing to drive the role of consumption to much higher levels if China is to rebalance in a nondisruptive way.

While the new strategy benefits local governments and wealthy homeowners, it has different implications for China’s middle- and low-income populations.

Because of the way credit expansion is managed, monetary expansion in China is directed mainly toward the supply side of the economy.

Banks and other fixed-income investors are buying long-date government bonds because the economy is struggling and better alternatives don’t exist.

Ignoring the problems of its historical precedents won’t make China’s success any more likely.

Neither Duterte’s pivot to China policy nor Marcos’s transparency initiative is changing China’s behavior.

Almost everyone in economic policymaking circles is concerned about China’s high and rising debt burden, but there is little evidence that this is likely to change much in 2024.

Beijing’s unwillingness to boost the consumption share of GDP is not as bizarre as it seems.

In spite of China’s extraordinarily high investment levels, domestic savings nonetheless exceed domestic investment by quite a lot, making it a large net exporter of capital.

Faced with an increase in strategic maneuvering by Moscow and Pyongyang, Beijing will not sit idly by and allow Putin and Kim to shape the security environment on its behalf.

China’s growing attention to Central Asia is perceived as a harbinger of tectonic shifts in regional geopolitics.