The swift and unexpected regulatory crackdowns taking place in China, on everything from private tutoring to online gaming, have roiled global equity markets and led some to question whether President Xi Jinping is stoking a second Cultural Revolution. Rather than a return to Maoist economics, however, the recent regulatory storm is better understood as an effort to consolidate popular support through a largely superficial campaign to reduce inequality. The Chinese leadership will need to be far more proactive in areas such as welfare policy, taxation, and free movement of people if it is serious about so-called “common prosperity.” Economic development has helped China, by some measures, become the world’s largest economy and a technological and military force to be reckoned with. But Beijing’s narrow focus on growth has also contributed to myriad social ills: yawning regional, wealth, and income inequalities, environmental degradation, declining fertility rates, and a palp