A former IMF official, Desmond Lachman, wrote an op-ed in US media outlet Barrons:
- So much for the Chinese economic boom. Last year China ended a disastrous zero-Covid policy that had crippled its economy. A rush of growth was widely expected to follow. Instead of booming, five months after the ending of its Covid restrictions, the Chinese economic recovery is sputtering. That is due in no small measure to the bursting of its outsized housing and credit market bubbles.
- The question now is whether China will experience a lost economic decade as Japan did in the 1990s following the bursting of its property and credit market bubble. We may be at the end of the period when China, the world’s second-largest economy, served as the world economy’s main growth engine and the main driver of international commodity prices.
China May Be Headed for a Lost Decade (may be gated)
Ungated copy of the piece is here.