Xi Jinping's self-reliance policy leading China towards stagnation

Right now, Beijing needs to be pushing hard on all fronts to keep its growth engine running

The ambition of China hawks in the Trump administration is to maintain American dominance by halting China’s economic rise. It’s strange that President Xi Jinping appears to be working toward the same end.

The risk for any economy approaching China’s level of development is that it gets ensnared in the middle-income trap. Once the low-hanging fruit of urbanization and industrialization have been plucked, countries tend to get stuck in second gear.

Latin America, the former Soviet Union and the largest Middle Eastern countries have never managed to close the gap with the U.S., Europe and Japan that opened up a century ago.