China Uncensored: Xi Wants Both Robust Growth And Central Control

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China's economy is collapsing. And if Xi Jinping wants to change that, he has to make a choice:

One of the biggest contradictions surrounding Xi and his government these days is their desire to promote robust economic growth while enacting tighter central control. You see, Xi wants China to become a highly developed and rejuvenated nation. It's part of his grand vision for China, his Chinese dream. But Xi's government has also lashed out at any inkling of dissent in the country and centralized control around the Chinese leader and his buddies.
The problem is the two things don't work very well together. Plenty of countries under authoritarian systems have reportedly experienced breakneck growth; with Russia, and Vietnam being recent examples. But the thing is that their growth, driven by fossil fuel exports in Russia's case and low-cost manufacturing in Vietnam's case, is not the kind of growth that Xi wants. Instead, he wants Chinese developments to be a modernization miracle led by so-called 'new quality productive forces.'  
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But it’s around this point that the nurturing of high development collides with the fixation on tight control. Under the CCP, it’s always been the case that the central government issues directives and mandates, while local governments and state-owned enterprises obey. It used to be that officials out in the provinces were given room to experiment with market dynamics and different structures to achieve the leadership’s objectives. But with Xi, things have changed compared to how things were done under his predecessors. He has aggressively centered decision-making in the hands of the central government and tied specific policies like the zero-COVID measures during the pandemic and the development of the 'new quality productive forces' closely with himself. Added to his never-ending purges, this has all to a fog of risk-avoidance and even fear shrouding the state apparatus. Today, local officials are more concerned with appearing faithful, checking boxes, and not making mistakes, rather than sensible results.
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