China’s Economy as Xi’s Means of Power Or Why the Chinese Economy is Not yet Bigger than That of the USA

Abstract

Contrary to optimistic predictions from the financial industry in 2011, China’s economy will not have overtaken that of the USA by 2025. Since 2012, Xi Jinping has largely brought the market, private property and the capitalist mode of production back under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi has curtailed the success factor of decentralization and continued to expand the failure factors of interventionism and state control. Capital is now flowing out of China, putting the renminbi under devaluation pressure. Even a relocation of production capacities from China primarily to other Asian countries can already be observed. In its policy of hegemony, China is steering the economy to achieve political and geopolitical ends and is practising geoeconomics. What remains unclear is how the geoeconomics pursued by Xi is intended to enable long-term growth in China.