The new China shock

The country's new strategy for achieving economic self-reliance poses an unprecedented challenge.

Some months ago, the Chinese authorities approached some of the biggest foreign companies in the country and asked them to tap a representative to participate in a small closed-door gathering on China’s new economic strategy. The meeting was to be with a senior official at an undisclosed time and location, and, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss it, companies were asked to send only ethnic Chinese representatives. In both content and form, the episode captured China’s eagerness to make its economy more recognisably Chinese, developing its own technologies and energy sources while relying on domestic consumption rather than on foreign demand.