China’s Xi Jinping is framing his new policies as a new way to diminish the gap between poor and rich in China. While under his predecessors’ new policies were a matter of waiting until they would be replaced by the next slogan, Xi’s slogans like those on the “common prosperity” are here to stay, says political analyst Victor Shih in Asia Times.
Asia Times:
Xi’s securities regulators are now going after China’s private equity and venture capital funds. Specifically, they want to stop what Beijing calls the disguising of public offerings as private placements as a way to curb the embezzlement of assets.
Investors are quickly realizing that Xi’s “common prosperity” is anything but a hollow slogan. And “with power mostly centralized in his hands, Xi now can change status quo policy quickly and even without much warning,” observes Victor Shih, author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation.
With Xi almost certain to win an unprecedented third term as leader next year, Shih notes, senior officials under him “want to zealously implement any new policy.”
This assertive implementation, he adds, will go on “regardless of the longer-term consequences because officials are afraid” of disappointing Xi.
Victor Shih is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
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