, Columnist
Xi’s Leading China Toward Stagnation
The president’s emphasis on self-reliance could steer the nation into the middle-income trap.
The low-hanging fruit of urbanization has been plucked.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
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The ambition of China hawks in the Trump administration is to maintain American dominance by halting China’s economic rise. It’s strange that President Xi Jinping appears to be working toward the same end.
The risk for any economy approaching China’s level of development is that it gets ensnared in the middle-income trap. Once the low-hanging fruit of urbanization and industrialization have been plucked, countries tend to get stuck in second gear.