Spring Festival travelers waiting at Hongqiao Railway Station, Shanghai, January 7, 2023. Credit: Imaginechina via AP Images
Long critical of Chinese censorship and Communist Party verbiage, world financial markets have enthusiastically embraced Beijing’s spin heralding a powerful post-Zero Covid reopening. Western media are similarly enthusiastic. In a breathless recent cover story, The Economist concluded that “China’s reopening will be the biggest economic event of 2023.” Just like that, the perfect storm is apparently about to turn into a beautiful day.
Proponents of the reopening play concede that there will be some bumps in the road as China works through the near-term difficulties that have arisen from the wholesale abandonment of an absurdly impractical zero-Covid policy. But both Beijing and the broad consensus of investors are more than willing to ignore these bumps.
Never mind that we have no idea of how to dimension the bumps. To the displeasure of the World Health Organization, we are being asked to swallow this dramatic about-face on policy&nbs
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When China announced it was ending quarantine requirements for incoming travelers, Chinese people collectively picked up their phones to search popular travel apps like Ctrip and Qunar. Owned by travel giant Trip.com, these apps helped Chinese travelers explore the world pre-pandemic and facilitated the human-to-human interactions that drove China's rise. But many of today's travelers seem to be sticking closer to home, and their hesitation to get back to the jetsetting habits of the past 20 years has far-reaching implications — especially for Trip.com.
The professor talks about China's real estate bubble; if China can develop a modern financial system without rule of law; and why it's not China that is reshaping the global order, but the world's response...
