China’s Economy and Ongoing Reforms in Uncertain Times

After four decades of breakneck economic growth and after officially achieving the first centennial goal of building a “moderately prosperous society”, the 14th Five-Year-Plan – endorsed in March 2021 – marks a pivot of China’s economic policy from prioritizing fast and quantitative growth towards pursuing “high-quality development” – with many variables that need to be optimized in parallel, ranging from social, health, youth and demographic policy objectives to environmental protection or “orderly capital deployment”. So: How to grow the economy while increasing equality and without stifling entrepreneurship? How to unlock value from China’s digital economy while stepping up governance of data and the internet economy? Or more fundamentally, how to effectively balance the role of the government (“visible hand”) and the role of market (“invisible hand”) to achieve “high-quality development”, as Xi Jinping already mused in his speech at a Politburo study session in May 2014?

COVID-19 has caused the cancellation of all stars symposia in 2020 and 2021 including those two foreseen in Shenzhen where we wanted to continue the annual stars China symposia previously held in Chengdu and Chongqing since 2011. Realizing that 2022 will be another year without reasonable possibilities for physical interactions with friends and experts in China, we have prepared a China-dedicated webinar series with seven webinars taking place between May and September 2022. We are happy to cooperate with SwissCham Beijing and Shanghai, the British Chamber (BritCham China), the French Chamber (CCI France Chine), the Italian Chamber (CICC) and the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) as well as with Caixin Global as media partner and the China Macro Group as knowledge partner.