Watch China.China is conflicted—slowly opening u

Watch China.China is conflicted—slowly opening up its economy in some areas while swiftly retrenching in others. In key sectors, Chinese leaders are backtracking. In others, they simply can’t figure out how to successfully reform. And while this zigzag worked in the 2010s, it could become a self-inflicted wound in the 2020s. That’s because China’s economy is now on shaky ground. Its growth over the last decade was largely built on credit-fueled spending that the country can’t afford to replicate in the decade ahead. This means officials in Beijing will need to get serious about the liberalizing reforms they’ve been promising since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization twenty years ago. Otherwise they may face a severe economic slowdown, which would upend the march to prosperity that has been so central to the Chinese Communist Party’s success.