The Chinese economy in 2025, in terms of major trends, presents a sharply divided picture: external demand is strong, exports are growing, and the high-tech sector is booming; conversely, domestic demand is insufficient, specifically with inadequate real estate and fixed asset investment, and consumption remains relatively weak. Consequently, some believe China’s economic competitiveness is unparalleled and will win the world. Others believe the Chinese economy faces a deep structural dilemma and is unsustainable.
The key now lies in the fact that these two views are like weights on opposite ends of a scale—which side is heavier? This will determine the future of the Chinese economy.
This consideration of balance is crucial. For instance, looking at the first three quarters of 2025, final consumption expenditure contributed 2.8 percentage points to the GDP contribution rate, capital formation contributed 0.9 percentage points, and imports and exports of goods and services contributed 1.5 percentage points. Taking the first three quarters as an example, the 3.7 percentage points from domestic demand is still far greater than the 1.5 percentage points from exports. If China’s economy moves further toward “prosperous foreign trade but weak domestic demand,” the negative impact on the economy will remain fundamental.
If we can find the key perspectives linking China’s economic structure, we can see the truth of the Chinese economy in this era of divergence.
What do Chinese Residents Feel?
Citizens who deeply experience the Chinese economy have highly polarized feelings. These feelings will determine the future through investment and consumption behaviors. Taking the third quarter of 2025 as an example, according to the Urban Depositor Questionnaire Report released by the Central Bank, respondents who believe the “situation is grim, employment is difficult” or “unsure” totaled 57.4%; the employment sentiment index, which measures people’s perceptions of current and future job market conditions, dropped to 25.8.
Consumption was also weak toward the end of the year. Retail sales of consumer goods increased by only +1.3% year-on-year in November and contracted to +0.9% in December. In the first three quarters, RMB deposits increased by 22.71 trillion yuan, of which household deposits increased by 12.73 trillion yuan. Residents are putting incremental funds more into deposits rather than expanding consumption or increasing leverage. These data intuitively reflect residents’ feelings about the economy without needing much explanation.
Naturally, there are significant differences in the “economic experience” of different people in 2025, such as differences caused by real estate. Starting in 2023, China showed a trend where housing prices in first-tier cities remained relatively firm, while prices in lower-tier cities fell significantly. However, by the second half of 2025, first- and second-tier cities came under greater pressure. Official data showed that in November, new and existing home prices in cities across all tiers declined, with the decline in existing homes in first-tier cities being more pronounced. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen fell by 1.3%, 0.8%, 1.2%, and 1.0% respectively. Second-tier city existing residential sales prices fell 0.6% month-on-month, and third-tier cities fell 0.6% month-on-month. As housing prices in first-tier cities generally change, and mortgage amounts for purchases are higher, the wealth impact of falling prices is significant. This trend continued into December.
Differences caused by local finance are also significant. China has a massive number of personnel supported by fiscal funds, as well as a welfare system. Local fiscal tightening—whether impacting the wage income of public sector employees (thereby affecting local consumption) or using public investment and social security spending to support employment and income—shows great variance. For example, first-tier cities can still maintain a fixed asset investment growth rate of around 5%, but in Tianjin, this figure is -8.7%, Chengdu is 2.1%, Hangzhou is 1.0%, Nanjing is -3.9%, and Hohhot is 1.3%. Jiangsu’s Yancheng is -7.8%, and Nantong is -3.3%. Differences become starker in lower-level cities; regions driven by foreign trade are faring better, such as Yiwu City at +7.6% and the strong manufacturing and equipment hub of Changshu at +11.4%, while cities with declines exceeding 20% are not uncommon, showing increased inter-regional differentiation.
Of course, people in different industries also have vastly different experiences. Those working in emerging sectors backed by national industrial policy may indeed see rising incomes and growth. But the key is: what are the externalities of these industries? For example, high-end manufacturing capacity does not translate proportionally into new jobs; production line automation increases per capita output but reduces the ability to “absorb employment widely,” so the externality is limited. Certain large-scale employment industries, such as new energy vehicles, are in the midst of a fierce price war. Companies use cost control to protect profits, so “wages and dividends” are not strong, weakening the externality.
The Rebalancing of the Three Carriages
The divergence among the three carriages of the economy—consumption, investment, and imports/exports—intensified in 2025. This brings us back to the differences behind the GDP contribution rates mentioned in the opening. From January to November, retail sales were +4.0%; fixed asset investment (excluding rural households) was -2.6% (even excluding real estate, it only increased slightly by +0.8%); exports grew by 6.2%, while imports grew by only 0.2%. Furthermore, compared to other countries’ export data, China’s import data may be overestimated (China’s 2025 import data has large areas of distortion). Of course, these data are too macro; to understand China’s economic situation deeply, one needs to look into the sub-items.
First is consumption, which this year presented an unfavorable situation of “starting high and ending low.” Retail sales growth was still 6.4% in May but slid all the way to 1.3% in November. The withdrawal of government subsidies was a very important factor. For example, home appliances, stimulated by consumption incentives, had a growth of up to 53% in May, which fell to 32% in June, and retreated to 3.3% by September. Moreover, new energy vehicles in the “trade-in” program have become a drag; for instance, October retail sales grew 2.9%, but excluding automobiles, the growth was 4.0%. Similarly, November retail sales grew 1.3%, but excluding automobiles, growth was 2.5%.
Regarding consumption, 2025 clearly showed a decline in large-ticket items like houses and cars. Residents can still maintain basic “pleasure consumption,” but a situation of consumption downgrading leading to price drops is evident. From January to November, the sales area of newly built commercial housing was -7.8%, and sales value was -11.1%, with price declines deeper than area declines. Retail sales of automobiles were -1.0% year-on-year; and in the single month of November, it was -8.3%.
Turning to pleasure consumption, the trend of “volume increase, price decrease” is very obvious. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism released data for the first three quarters: the number of domestic trips was +18.0%, but travel spending was only +11.5% (4.85 trillion yuan). This means the “average spending per trip” dropped by about 5.5%. Movies are the same; from Jan-Nov, box office revenue was +19.5%, while cinema admissions were +20.3%. In terms of consumption channels, among retail formats above a designated size from Jan-Nov, convenience stores (+6.0%) and supermarkets (+4.7%) performed significantly better than brand specialty stores (+0.1%) and department stores (+0.7%). This reflects that daily necessity consumption channels are better, while the brand specialty sector has stalled. The pressure on prices is, of course, clearly reflected in CPI and PPI data.
Then we look at investment. The investment field was heavily dragged down by a -15.9% drop in real estate development investment. Overall year-on-year was -2.6%; within this, private investment was -5.3%, state-controlled investment was -1.1%, and infrastructure was -1.1%. The support for growth came from the non-consumption part of the “Two News” (new infrastructure and urbanization), specifically—large-scale equipment renewal, which brought a +12.2% increase in investment in equipment and tools purchase, already accounting for 17.4% of total investment. New investment this year clearly relies on the government and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Social financing surged 8.5% from Jan-Nov, mainly driven by government bonds, which increased by a staggering +18.8%.
In summary, among the three carriages, consumption and investment are very weak; the only standout is exports.
Hidden Worries Under a Trillion-Dollar Surplus
The imbalance of 2025 sees weak domestic demand pushing economic growth overseas, with net exports providing a very obvious boost to the economy. From Jan-Nov, the total value of imports and exports of goods was 41.21 trillion yuan. Exports were 24.46 trillion yuan, up 6.2% year-on-year, while imports were 16.75 trillion yuan, up only 0.2%. Strong exports running parallel with weak imports make foreign trade growth closer to a result of “external strength and internal weakness,” rather than a synchronous recovery of “both internal and external prosperity.” China’s trade surplus historically breached the psychological barrier of 1 trillion US dollars, a figure exceeding the total GDP of many major global economies.
The source of China’s export resilience is no longer the cliché of “cheap labor”; that dividend faded ten years ago. Currently, the first pillar of export competitiveness is the continued elevation of electromechanical products as the export base: exports of electromechanical products reached 14.89 trillion yuan, up 8.8%, accounting for 60.9% of total export value. The second pillar is the high-end evolution within electromechanical products, with clean technology, electronics, semiconductors, and high-end equipment expanding simultaneously. Customs data show integrated circuit exports at 1.29 trillion yuan, up 25.6%; Reuters also reported that electronic machinery and semiconductors played a key role in the export rebound in 2025.
This type of competitiveness did not suddenly appear in 2025. It is the result of national-level industrial upgrading policies around 2015. Resources, financing, and local investment promotion were locked into specific industries for the long term. Subsequently, through industrial clusters, R&D, components, manufacturing equipment, and engineering talent were compressed into the same geographical locations—various industrial parks. This formed a replicable, massive scale. For example, “new generation information technology (including integrated circuits)” and “high-end CNC machine tools and robots” have changed the face of enterprises on a ten-year scale, allowing a segment of mid-to-high-end electromechanical products to form long-term competitiveness under domestic market incubation and government subsidies.
Taking the shipbuilding industry as an example, in 2025, China not only captured over half of global orders but also monopolized high-value-added green-powered ship models. This dominance did not appear suddenly but is based on years of technical accumulation and localization of the supply chain. Similarly, in the field of construction machinery, brands like Sany Heavy Industry have eaten into Caterpillar’s market share by relying on complete control over core intermediate products like hydraulic parts and engines.
By 2025, this competitiveness evolved from a single “product advantage” to a “system advantage.” When an industrial park can assemble 95% of the parts needed to produce an electric vehicle within 24 hours, this efficiency barrier is something no tariff stick can physically destroy in the short term.
The structure of export destinations also changed in 2025. Shipments to the US fell 29% year-on-year in November, but exports to the EU, Australia, and Southeast Asia grew by 14.8%, 35.8%, and 8.2% respectively, allowing total exports to rebound even in a high-tariff environment. This does not mean dependence on the US has disappeared, but rather that companies are proactively finding “tariff entry points” in orders, capacity, and overseas layouts, using non-US markets to hedge against the decline in the US.
Much of this is transshipment trade. In 2025, China’s exports of auto parts and electronic components to Mexico surged, and the growth curve matches Mexico’s export curve of finished products to the US highly. This is by no means a coincidence. In fact, China is shifting from “selling finished products to the US” to “selling factory capabilities to Mexico/Vietnam.” This marks a fundamental shift in China’s role in foreign trade: from a provider of final consumer goods to the behind-the-scenes controller of the global supply chain. While this model circumvents direct tariffs, it comes at a huge price—Chinese companies lose brand premiums and are reduced to lower-margin OEM upstream players.
The real problem lies on the profit side. Some industries, represented by photovoltaics, have shown signs of simultaneous price wars and losses: Reuters reported that losses for top photovoltaic companies expanded in the first half of 2025; and in early 2026, China announced it would cancel/lower export tax rebates for photovoltaics and batteries, one reason being to curb the steep drop in export prices and the competitive method of using tax rebates as discounts. This means “exchanging price for volume” supported shipments in the short term but eroded corporate profits and amplified external backlash in the medium term. Chinese companies are doing more but earning less, severely eroding their balance sheets, leaving them unable to undertake the next round of capital expenditure or raise wages for employees even with orders in hand.
The tolerance of major global markets for this “flood-like” export from China also reached a critical point with the end of 2025. Next, we will see how this imbalance detonates a trade counterattack on a global scale.
The Morphology of Trade War
Multiple global markets have begun to contain China: high-intensity, repeatedly escalating comprehensive confrontation from the US; parallel tariffs and regulations from Europe, with year-end border carbon taxes raising long-term compliance thresholds; and the Global South rapidly advancing domestic trade remedies and controls on low-price imports, compressing the buffer space for China’s export diversification.
The characteristic of the United States in 2025 is the simultaneous rise in intensity and uncertainty. In 2025, the US utilized authorities like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and Section 232 investigations to increase pressure, while simultaneously alternating between ceasefire negotiations and extensions in the trade war with China, presenting an “escalation—ceasefire—re-escalation” policy rhythm. Under this structure, China has been very tough toward the US, a strategy designed to raise the opponent’s cost of escalation and gain bargaining chips. China dares to be tougher also due to its countermeasure tools: export controls on critical minerals are frequently mentioned, superimposed on the strengthening of foreign trade legal tools. For companies, this means export substitution to the US cannot be solved solely by “switching markets”; the uncertainty cost will be higher, and many adjustments can only revolve around compliance, supply chain restructuring, and negotiation windows.
The difference between Europe and the US lies in “rule-based systems.” The EU’s final countervailing duties on Chinese pure electric vehicles entered the implementation phase in 2025, and the dispute has entered the WTO panel process; meanwhile, EU tools like the Foreign Subsidies Regulation extend scrutiny from border tariff rates to public procurement and market access, making the EU’s veto points on Chinese exports more dispersed and institutionalized. This gives companies a different response route than in the US: the EU can be very tough in individual industries, but it often organizes measures into a highly technical rule system, where companies can fight for space through price undertakings and supply chain adjustments. What truly impacts China significantly is the path of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM): it rewrites EU barriers from tariffs to carbon emission compliance, entering the payment phase starting in 2026. The essence of CBAM is to forcibly level the cost advantage brought by “differences in environmental standards.” For Chinese raw material exporters relying on cheap coal power to maintain thin margins, this will bring significant pressure.
OECD assessments show that industries covered by CBAM are concentrated in basic categories like steel and aluminum, which account for about 5% of export value to the EU; more critically, the EU’s review and discussion on anti-circumvention mean the impact may spill over from basic steel and aluminum raw materials to a broader downstream manufacturing chain, continuously raising costs.
The Global South countries appear to be China’s friends, but they are also deploying numerous countermeasures. Their characteristics are “low threshold, rapid diffusion, targeting low-priced goods.” Compared to the more complex procedures in Europe and the US, many Global South economies prefer tools like anti-dumping, general tariff hikes, or taxes on low-value parcels because political mobilization costs are low, execution is faster, and they often hit steel chains, light industry, and low-price e-commerce. This will directly squeeze the buffer space for China to “turn to non-US markets” after exports to the US are restricted: China’s alternative markets are still growing, but they are no longer friction-free spaces. What is more likely to appear in the next 2–3 years is profit margin compression and rising compliance friction, rather than a cliff-like drop in total volume.
Latin America:
- Mexico: This is the most lethal blow. As a core springboard for China’s transshipment to the US, the Mexican government, from late 2025 to early 2026, imposed temporary tariffs of 5% to 50% on 544 items of Chinese products, including clothing, footwear, steel, aluminum, and chemicals. This is almost a carpet-bombing blockade.
- Brazil: As a core member of BRICS, to save local steel mills, Brazil imposed emergency anti-dumping duties on several types of Chinese carbon steel pipes; at the same time, it restored import tariffs on new energy vehicles and will raise them in steps to 35% in 2025, directly blocking the expansion of BYD and Great Wall Motor.
- Chile: Because the largest local steel plant, Huachipato, was on the verge of bankruptcy, the Chilean government withstood pressure to impose anti-dumping duties as high as 24.9% – 33.5% on Chinese steel balls and bars.
- Colombia: Launched an anti-dumping investigation into galvanized steel sheets exported from China, followed by the tariff stick.
Southeast Asia:
- Indonesia: This is the most radical case of 2025. To protect millions of local micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the Indonesian Ministry of Trade plans to implement safeguard duties of up to 200% on Chinese-made textiles, footwear, electronics, and ceramics.
- Thailand: To curb the impact of low prices from cross-border e-commerce platforms like Temu, the Thai government began collecting a 7% VAT on imported goods priced below 1500 Baht (approx. 300 RMB), plugging the loophole of tax exemption for small parcels.
- Vietnam: Even as a fellow socialist country, Vietnam launched severe anti-dumping investigations into Chinese wind turbine towers and some steel products to prevent excess Chinese capacity from destroying Vietnam’s fledgling heavy industry.
Eurasia and the Middle East:
- Turkey: As a hub connecting Europe and Asia, Turkey imposed an additional 40% tariff on Chinese fuel and hybrid vehicles and required an extremely harsh localized service network, effectively freezing direct exports of Chinese cars.
- India: Besides continuing the ban on Chinese apps, India increased anti-dumping duties on Chinese industrial laser machines, ball bearings, and some chemicals in 2025. More fatally, India’s review of Chinese FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) remains in a “frozen” state, making the route of “building factories in India to avoid tax” unviable for Chinese companies.
The direct consequence of the superposition of trade countermeasures from the US, Europe, and Southern countries is not an immediate halt to foreign trade, but the wearing down of profit margins and cash flow, which then spills over into employment and finance, bringing greater risk externalities.
The “Internal Injuries” of Foreign Trade
The previous section analyzed how export competition is gradually institutionalized into tariffs, compliance, and enforcement costs. Now we analyze the impact of foreign trade on the domestic front.
Foreign trade indeed played a short-term “floor” (stabilizing) role in 2025: when domestic demand was weak, export resilience and weak imports jointly pushed up the surplus to a trillion-scale, which is naturally an inflow of wealth for the nation. But a surplus as high as $1 trillion does not automatically turn into financial stability and improved resident income. The World Bank’s description is blunt: while the current account surplus expands, simultaneous net capital outflows can offset its stabilizing effect, and foreign exchange reserves may even decline.
This reality of “stabilization does not equal dividends” is first reflected in fiscal matters. Ministry of Finance data for Jan-Nov shows export tax rebates of 1.9038 trillion yuan, up 5.6% year-on-year; meanwhile, value-added tax and consumption tax on imported goods were 1.6520 trillion yuan, down 4.7% year-on-year, and tariffs were 214.9 billion yuan, down 3.2% year-on-year. Looking only at these three items highly relevant to foreign trade, the year-on-year changes already present structural tension: export tax rebates increased by about 101 billion yuan, while taxes at the import stage decreased by about 81.5 billion yuan, and tariffs decreased by about 7.1 billion yuan, totaling a tax revenue decline of about 190 billion yuan. This is not a judgment on the overall foreign trade deficit, but it reveals a direction: when the import tax base weakens while subsidies to stabilize foreign trade and tax tools increase, finances become very passive, policy becomes stretched, and locked into short-term choices of “guaranteeing shipments and stabilizing enterprises.”
The logic of the employment chain is similar: the coverage of foreign trade personnel is still large, but risks are rising. The World Bank estimates that up to 100 million jobs are at risk related to exports; meanwhile, the share of employment related to foreign trade in manufacturing dropped from 41% in 2005 to 27% in 2020. This means external demand is still critical to the economy, but exports are no longer effective in significantly boosting employment. The export structure is more capital and technology-intensive; when external pressure brings greater uncertainty, companies are more likely to choose to compress labor and wages to cope with shocks.
Once profit pressure appears, it is often amplified on the private enterprise side. In 2025, when industrial profits declined year-on-year, the decline in private enterprise profits was often greater. Since private enterprises accommodate more employment, this impacts the overall employment environment.
The concentration of foreign trade gains in specific industries further “localizes” this pressure. Taking Anhui as an example, public reports citing customs data state that in the first 11 months of 2025, Anhui’s exports of the “New Three Items”—new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products—reached approximately 85.3 billion yuan, an increase of 88% year-on-year. This type of growth can support local industrial chains and employment expectations, but it also shapes stronger path dependence: localities are more inclined to allocate resources, conduct investment promotion, and stabilize employment around star export industries. However, star industries are often also under the spotlight of trade friction and price wars. Once external barriers increase, or companies further suppress prices to secure orders, the shock is more likely to quickly transmit back to wages, private enterprise employment, and local tax revenue in these highly concentrated areas.
Combining the above factors, foreign trade in 2025 looks more like a short-term stabilizing tool: it can first stabilize output and the balance of payments, but through rising tax rebates, a weakening import tax base, and exposure to employment risks, it pushes long-term side effects toward finance, employment, and income distribution. In the era of foreign trade as a stabilizer, exports, surplus, and wealth are not equivalent; the same increment of exports will bring very different employment and fiscal consequences. When we look at 2026, the key is not just whether exports can still grow, but on whom the external uncertainty and price pressure will unload the shock, and at what speed it will transmit.
Deleveraging and the Risk Process
Against this background, the economy in 2026 may continue the structure of weak domestic demand and relatively good external demand. In this context, de-risking in the real estate and government debt sectors becomes a major issue for measuring the Chinese economy. A large number of measures have been introduced in these two areas continuously, making it difficult to grasp the key points.
Here is an introduction: real estate risks are mainly divided into three parts: first, asset risks caused by falling property prices; second, default risks caused by unfinished projects (rotten-tail buildings); and finally, local fiscal risks caused by the contraction of land finance. Regardless of the aspect, the most critical issue is market supply and demand, namely the changes in the area of commercial housing for sale and the real estate destocking cycle.
Although the area of commercial housing for sale has decreased for 9 consecutive months starting from the end of February, the magnitude of the decline is very limited. Taking November as an example, compared to the previous month, the decline in area for sale accounted for only 0.3% of the total area for sale, far less than the 17.93% decline in commercial housing sales in November. It can be said that real estate is still a considerable distance from reaching a supply-demand balance. Until fundamental supply and demand are achieved, the aforementioned problems will continue to worsen.
The government debt issue is similar. China is now swapping implicit debt for explicit debt and lowering its interest rates by borrowing new to repay old. The substance of this is that financial risk is being “internalized” into bank balance sheets, at the cost of shrinking banks’ net interest margins and compressing their profitability and credit pricing ability. In this area, the key is to watch the trend of government revenue and expenditure. We mentioned above that government debt surged 18.8% this year, while during the same period, general public budget revenue was 20 trillion, rising only slightly by 0.8%, and this was achieved under strengthened collection of taxes such as personal income tax (which surged 11.5%). This part of the growth was 160 billion. Meanwhile, trapped by the predicament of real estate, revenue from land sales plummeted by 10.7%, a decrease of 348.9 billion. Actual government revenue is still decreasing.
Therefore, the fundamental pressure on government revenue and expenditure has not been alleviated; the problem is currently being pressed onto commercial banks and currency.
Fatal Imbalances
We mentioned at the beginning that the Chinese economy presents two ends of a scale: strong external demand, growing exports, and remarkable high-tech sectors; versus insufficient domestic demand, especially insufficient real estate and fixed asset investment, and relatively soft consumption. If we view the two ends of the scale as a chase, can the former quickly catch up to the latter? In many of the areas we analyzed, there may be significant challenges.
Speaking from the bottom up, the real estate sector combines three major contribution factors: employment, resident wealth effects, and local finance. New sectors, however, lack sufficient employment externalities and have a smaller impact on resident wealth, and due to export tax rebates and price wars, they even drag down government finances. From this angle, it is difficult to provide a fundamental reversal in the direction of China’s deleveraging and risk.
Regarding foreign trade, total external demand will determine the growth ceiling. The WTO predicts a low growth rate of about 0.5% for global goods trade volume in 2026, which means global new orders are close to a “zero-sum allocation.” In this environment, even if China maintains its share, it will be harder to replicate the high growth of 2025, and competition will more easily enter the price realm. Multiple institutions have similar predictions: judgments on 2026 exports mostly lean toward “slowdown but still positive,” with growth around 3%. A few more optimistic predictions exist, but they are often built on two premises: foreign trade barrier growth is lower than expected, and the price and exchange rate environments are friendlier.
Returning to the balance of the three carriages, the foreign trade sector, superimposed with capacity and “involution” (intense internal competition) issues, is now spreading anxiety about Chinese dumping to foreign countries. When industrial expansion is accompanied by profits being swallowed by price competition, the diffusion of tax bases and wages is naturally limited. Furthermore, the continuous decline of labor-intensive industries will also lead to unemployment pressure. Conversely, this will constitute a further contraction in consumption. Foreign trade is difficult to directly radiate into consumption and investment in the short term.
Even in the most advantageous fields, there is the problem of overcapacity. On this point, if capacity expansion is allowed to run free, price wars will crush profits, wages, and tax bases; if capacity is forcefully reduced, short-term investment and employment will be weaker. The OECD 2025 Outlook explicitly warns that “anti-involution measures may cause investment in overcapacity industries to drop beyond expectations”.
To understand the Chinese economy in 2025, it is like a giant machine where large parts are beginning to cool down, while a considerable part remains at high temperature. But the temperature of this part is difficult to conduct to the cooling parts, constituting a fundamental problem. Therefore, following this path, the great divergence we mentioned in the first part will likely intensify further, whether across cities, industries, or generations. Both international and domestic economic circles have been calling for China to let go and stimulate domestic demand. This certainly does not mean using “consumer goods trade-ins,” but involves deeper economic institutional reform, to which the CCP is very resistant.
It appears that government-driven investment growth will increase in 2026, re-engaging in risk control and stabilization through infrastructure. But regardless of the magnitude, this is retreading the old path. The suspense of the Chinese economy will continue. Only this time, our question is: how far are we from a crushing imbalance?