How soon and at what height will China’s economy peak? (2024)

CHINA HAS this year liberated its economy from the lockdowns, quarantines and other strictures of its “zero-covid” regime. But it has not freed itself from longer-term worries about its growth prospects. Its population is shrinking. Its epic housing boom is over. Thanks to a regulatory crackdown on e-commerce firms, the Communist Party has cowed the tech billionaires it once courted. Jack Ma, a former teacher who became one of China’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, has returned to teaching—in Japan.

The Communist Party now prizes security over prosperity, greatness over growth, sturdy self-reliance over the filigreed interdependence that distinguished China’s past economic success. Foreign investors are more wary, seeking to relocate or at least diversify their supply chains. And America is eager to limit Chinese access to some “foundational technologies”. The economics of mutual benefit has yielded to the geopolitics of mutual suspicion.