Noah Smith, Columnist

China’s Growth Machine No Longer Looks Unstoppable

The debt-powered stimulus the country used to steer through the Great Recession is starting to look like a drag.

January 15, 2019 at 10:30 PM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

China’s rust belt.
Photographer: Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images AsiaPac

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China’s economy is slowing. The downturn may be the result of recent events — the trade war with the U.S., or retrenchment in China’s real estate and infrastructure sectors. But it may also be the latest manifestation of a trend that began a decade ago. And it may signal that China’s entire system of authoritarian state capitalism is less effective than many had believed.

Recent data suggest that consumption is falling, indicating rocky times ahead: