BY WILLIAM PESEK
As President Xi Jinping turns Beijing’s stimulus-industrial complex up to 11, 'Minsky moment' risks only increase
(Asia Times) Suddenly, this president for life thing is looking less like a win for Xi Jinping as China loses altitude. Last year, he won the Communist Party’s approval to stay on indefinitely – all part of his plan to out-reform Deng Xiaoping.
by Michael R. Auslin via National Review
The Wall Street Journal reports that China’s economy is growing at its slowest rate since 1990 — and that those are the official figures, which, as the article notes, are viewed increasingly skeptically by economists. Of course, the official 6.6 percent growth rate would be the envy of all developed countries, but for China, it’s a continuation of a slowdown that underscores the major challenges facing the Chinese Communist Party and government in the next decade. As I argued in my book, The End of the Asian Century, decades of sweeping problems under the rug have caught up with China.