After more than three decades of sustained economic growth, China has become the second-largest economy in the world. Chinese policies and behaviour have come to shape the global economy in profound ways and what China does, or does not do, at home and abroad often has broad implications for the rest of the world. This policy brief examines China’s external and internal economic imbalance and analyzes the political obstacles hindering its economic rebalancing, concluding that without political reform, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang are unlikely to be much more successful than their predecessors in rebalancing China’s economy.
