Is Chinese communism stagnating?

The argument that will define the 2020s

Ever since its communist party threw off the legacy of Chairman Mao, the world has watched astonished as China abandoned state-enforced misery and became an economic superpower. The party’s adoption of market reforms produced the biggest escape from poverty in human history. 

The stunning economic success confounded westerners who wanted to believe that only democratic states with the rule of law could prosper. 

And now China is stagnating, or so it seems. For the past 18 months, dictatorship has reverted to type. Instead of allowing markets to operate freely,  Xi Jinping’s communist party is enforcing its will by attacking online businesses, imposing a ferociously restrictive covid lockdown, and inflating the greatest property bubble the world has ever seen and then presiding over the greatest property crash the world has ever seen. True to form, the state  apparatus busily suppresses information that might reveal the truth.

As in the old Soviet Union, illicit jokes reflect popular cynicism.. One found this week by online analysts at the US-based China Digital Times, tells the story of a man who “stubbed my toe on something. Upon closer inspection, I saw it was a bronze lamp. It was smudged, so I picked it up and gave it a good wipe — and out popped a genie!