The complete end of China’s “Reform and Open-Door Policy” as a protracted NEP: a warning against optimism
With growing signs of China’s gigantic economic bubble burst, the U.S.-led liberal democratic world is taking breath since it sees China would be unable to keep the dynamic economic powerhouse that has enabled unparalleled arms buildups, aggressive military policy, and coercive diplomacy for the last two decades. Evidently, the Chinese economy is undergoing a sharp decline of consumption, foreign trade, and investment, complicated by anti-market laws and its arbitrary enforcement, as typified by the new Counter-espionage Law. The current circumstances present acute economic aggravation, unemployment and other socio-economic problems. This is ascribable to the policy actions and inactions under the Xi Jinping dictatorship, not directly to the internal systemic dynamics shaped by the interplay of demographic and other endogenous factors[ 2 ]. 1. China repeated a NEP T o grasp the nature of these developments, it is critically important to put them in the context of the start and end