China's growth is fading, as is its dream of middle-class security

In the UK, prime minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer are both putting faith in five-point plans. Never knowingly undersold, China's government announced last week that it's going for a 31-point strategy.

- Rana Mitter

Earlier this month, there were alarmed faces in Beijing at the news that its GDP had improved by 0.8% in the second quarter of 2023, prompting a sense that China's economy needs a rapid boost. For the past few years, the private sector has been a target for high-profile crackdowns by the Chinese Communist party (CCP), worried that companies such as Tencent and Alibaba were enjoying too high a profile. Now, it says it wants to make the atmosphere for entrepreneurs "bigger, better, and stronger".

This feels urgent, because China's economic recovery seems to have stalled, and the CCP's standing at home still depends on Xi Jinping's government creating a "Chinese dream" of a middle-class lifestyle. The end of Covid restrictions last December seemed to mark the start of a powerful bounceback in consumption; travel agencies were besieged by people booking holidays they had been denied for nearly three years. But in the past few months there have been more worrying signs. Youth unemployment is growing: about one in five of China's 16- to 24-year-olds were unemployed in June. Many graduates have had to take jobs as delivery drivers because no professional jobs are available, and social media is awash with images of hard-earned but seemingly useless degree certificates.