Xi Keeps China Investors Guessing With Mystery Politburo Meeting
- Latest readout from top body was shortest of leader’s tenure
- Brevity suggests focus on sensitive or fast-changing issues
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Investors looking for signals on China’s plans to tackle Covid-19, the economic slowdown or Russia’s war in Ukraine were left disappointed this week, when the Communist Party’s Politburo released a mysteriously brief statement from its latest meeting.
The 114-character readout from Monday’s meeting was by far the shortest of President Xi Jinping’s decade-long tenure and the first to not disclose specific discussion topics, according to a Bloomberg analysis of some 111 statements. The account -- saying only that members “studied recent work” after pausing to remember victims of the March 21 air crash in southern China -- compares with an average of about 1,460 characters released after earlier meetings.