Emperor Xi to take Japanese path

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Via FT:

China’s Communist party has cleared the way for President Xi Jinping to rule for life, and in the process strengthened the state’s “command and control” power over the world’s second-largest economy. Mr Xi’s unparalleled power theoretically allows him to push through painful reforms in the face of recalcitrant vested interests, particularly in state-dominated sectors.

The question is whether he intends to. When Mr Xi took over the Communist party in 2012, bureaucrats hastened to reassure foreign businesses and diplomats that the president was merely consolidating power to enact economic reforms. So far economic liberalisation has been slow to materialise.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.