Xi views a rejuvenated Chinese Communist Party as the ticket to shepherd China into the role of a great power. The turmoil in China’s economy is the deliberate byproduct of the leadership’s emphasis on party-building.

China’s economic model is broken and needs to change, but the proposed economic reforms will not succeed unless the Chinese state reshapes itself in far-reaching ways.

To make the market “decisive,” the state must retreat. China’s leaders have declared war on powerful “vested interests” that oppose reforms, but the biggest vested interest in the Chinese economy is, in fact, the state itself

The conditions that facilitated China’s last major burst of economic reform in the 1990s are largely present today, potentially boosting the prospects for real and enduring economic change.