China’s Contradictions Remain Unresolved
The following is an excerpt from Diana Choyleva's op-ed in the Wire China. Diana is a Senior Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.
In the Chinese Communist Party’s five-year political cycle, the Third Plenum meeting is usually where long-term economic blueprints are unveiled. With the Chinese economy under greater strain than at any point in the last 40 years, many analysts had hoped this month’s Plenum would provide greater clarity on how these issues would be resolved. Instead, the meeting’s set of seemingly contradictory messages left many perplexed or in downright despair.
How does, for instance, the Party plan to both ‘let the market go’ (放得活) while ‘keeping it in check’ (管得住)? For veteran China watchers, the whole thing has a ring of déjà-vu. Chen Yun, Deng Xiaoping’s conservative, pro-planning counterpart in the 1980s and 1990s, thought the market economy should be like a bird in a cage — free to move about, but only within limits.
In the West, increased Party-state control is seen as the opposite of enhancing market dynamics. One must take precedence, and we all know Xi usually leans in the direction of state control.
But China lives in contradictions much more readily than its critics. The leadership always phrases its overriding goal as a ‘main contradiction.’ This does not mean siding with one or the other — it means combining the two to create a new path.
And as Beijing is engaged in an all-out great power competition with America, the need for a new path of economic development has never been more urgent. Xi believes China’s scarce resources must be channeled into industries that enable it to resist and ultimately transcend U.S. attempts to suppress its rise. The country must remain confident it will be successful. In some ways, its survival depends on it.
