Curbing capitalism: How is economic policymaking in China changing? Launch of the CREC-IEMS Eurasia Business Dialogue

Recent policy and regulatory pronouncements point to significant changes in China’s business and economic landscape.  While the issues that have motivated a more intrusive and interventionist Chinese state – data security and protection, social fairness and “common prosperity”, and excessive borrowing and speculation in real estate – mirror concerns elsewhere, they also raise wider questions about the trajectory of the Chinese economy and its ability to make the transition to a productivity-led, innovation-driven one. A state that encroaches more extensively into the commercial realm and the private sector also challenges conventional notions of the developmental state: that as the economy grows and becomes more complex, the state recedes and the market (and private actors) play an ever larger role. To what extent do recent regulatory changes and policy pronouncements represent a major shift in China’s economic model, as opposed to a mere refinement? What do they imply for the future of innovation and entrepreneurship in China, much of which was driven by private actors in recent years? And how do these various efforts to curb (the excesses of) capitalism affect China’s near and long-term growth prospects?