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US-China relations
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Open QuestionsStephen Roach on how Beijing can right its economic course and the US’ big China ‘blunder’

Economist Stephen Roach sees productivity and household consumption as critical for future growth, calls out US for green tech ‘hypocrisy’

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Illustration: Victor Sanjinez Garcia
Kinling Loin Beijing
Stephen Roach is a former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and also served as Morgan Stanley’s chief economist during his 30-year career at the investment bank. He was later a senior lecturer at Yale University’s School of Management and is now a senior research scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Centre. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.

You have paid close attention to the third plenums in China and know their significance to China’s economic future. There have been years of calls for “structural reforms” as China aims to advance into high-quality growth. Looking back, what do you think have been the hits and misses in terms of economic reform?

I initially was very excited about the significant number of reforms that came out of the third plenum of the 18th Central Committee in November 2013. It was President Xi Jinping’s first real major effort to formulate policies and reforms that we thought would lead to major structural shifts in the Chinese economy.

Now, nearly 11 years later, I would have to say that while the Chinese economy has progressed on many fronts, the implementation of those reforms has been disappointing.

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