A summit titled "Promoting the Integration of the Digital Economy and the Real Economy" held during the China Development Forum, March 25, 2023. Credit: China Development Forum
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the economy grew by 4.5% year on year in the first quarter of 2023. While that hardly matches the robust growth of the pre-pandemic period, it did exceed market expectations. And with the right policies, China can do even better.
There is plenty of pessimism about China’s economic prospects nowadays, with many warning – not without reason – that China has entered a deflationary period. In the first quarter of 2023, China’s consumer price index (CPI) rose by only 1.3% year on year – down from 1.8% in the previous quarter. More striking, China’s producer price index (PPI) fell by 2.5% year on year in March – its sixth consecutive month of decline.
This is not a new trend. In fact, China’s PPI has been negative for the better part of the last decade. Beginning in March 2012, China’s PPI was in negative territory for 54 consecutive months. In January 2019, it turn
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On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
