CHINESE LEADER XI JINPING APPEARED to revise his long-term economic outlook when he opened a major political event last month, hinting at modest growth that casts fresh doubt on China’s capacity to surpass the United States in the future.
Beijing’s two-step plan to build what it calls a “great modern socialist country in all respects” by 2049, the centennial of the People’s Republic of China, involves first raising levels of public wealth and doubling the national economy by 2035.
To achieve that, economists believed China would need to maintain annual gross domestic product growth of at least 5 percent, a once-realistic trajectory that might have seen it one day overtake the U.S. economy in GDP terms—valued at $23 trillion versus China’s $17.73 trillion in 2021, according to the World Bank’s records.
This first milestone, known as the “basic realization of socialist modernization,” was declared in 2020 and had been expected to take 15 years to achieve. But on October 16, as Xi opened the Chinese Communist Party’s twice-a-decade national congress, the target appeared less ambitious.
Two years ago, Xi said it was “entirely possible” to double national
