Decades of miraculous growth had transformed a desperately poor nation into an economic superpower, with a gross domestic product that by some measures was larger than America’s.
China’s aggressive response to Covid was widely praised; its Belt and Road Initiative, a huge program of infrastructure investments around the world, was clearly a bid for global influence, maybe even supremacy.
But now China is stumbling.
Its “zero Covid” policy of locking cities down at the first indication of an outbreak proved untenable, but abandoning the policy hasn’t produced the expected economic surge.
Some analysts attribute China’s stumble to policies of its current leadership.
Persons:
Covid, Adam Posen
Organizations:
Initiative, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Locations:
China, Japan, U.S