In today’s China, where the government hates nothing more than to express weakness, the signals may not be so obvious: Xi Jinping is not about to don a cardigan and ruminate about “a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.” But China’s economic slowdown is nonetheless likely to take an insidious toll on the Chinese psyche. deceleration of the 1970s brought on a national melancholia, culminating in 1979 with Jimmy Carter’s hand-wringing in what came to be known as his “malaise speech,” even though Carter never used that term. People are happiest when they experience better-than-expected progress. When New York City flirted with bankruptcy, its plight was taken as a symbol of broader moral and cultural decay. Time magazine lamented in 1974 that “middle-class people are being pushed into such demeaning economies as buying clothes at rummage sales” a year or so later, its cover asked, “Can Capitalism Survive?” In September 1975, after President Gerald Ford survived two attempts on his life in quick succession, an adviser named Alan Greenspan responded with a memo about the “nihilism, radicalism, and violence” that seemed to grip some Americans.
Even though growth of more than 3 percent may sound robust by today’s standards, at the time it felt ghastly.
Its economy had expanded by 4.4 percent a year, on average, during the go-go ’50s and ’60s, but growth slowed by about one-quarter during the following decade, to 3.2 percent a year. Like China today, the United States of the 1970s experienced an abrupt economic slowdown. But for those with a long memory, it could just as well be the United States of the Nixon era. To anyone who keeps up with the news, the superpower would seem easy to identify: China. For years, it has carefully managed its exchange rate and limited the flow of capital across its borders now the dam is cracking. For decades, it has shaped and guided its economy via tight control of its banks now that lever is malfunctioning. For a generation, its growth has been envied now that growth is decelerating sharply.
A n anxious superpower is confounded by a troubled economy.
0 kommentar(er)
