In March, at the National People’s Congress, Beijing set its annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth target. Since 1985, in every year but one, China has met or exceeded its official projections, raising doubts about whether or not Beijing’s claims of rapid growth can be believed. The New York Federal Reserve issued a report in 2020 that challenged the numbers, saying that China’s GDP growth chart was too smooth for the data to be authentic.
Typical of a communist system, the central government’s growth target is divided up and assigned as quotas for provincial governments, who in turn set quotas for local governments, and so on down the line. Politicians who fail to meet quotas can expect negative consequences so they are incentivized to lie, pumping up the numbers. The reports are

China’s so-called economic miracle is running into the ground as the reality of central planning becomes increasingly obvious and an economic reckoning looms.
Original Article: China’s Inefficient and Unsustainable Central Planning

Over one hundred years ago, Ludwig von Mises wrote about the impossibility of successful rational economic planning under socialism. Yet China is still trying, even while its blend of markets and socialism results in shortages and surpluses. This article examines three contemporary initiatives spearheaded by Xi Jinping, each marked by an inherent problem: food insecurity, the aging crisis, and the real-estate bubble. Each problem was created by legislation and is being made worse by further legislation enacted to correct the problem.
Food Scarcity
China is a net food importer, capable of producing only 66 percent of the food it needs. The country has less than half as much farmland as the United States and four times the population. In order to increase food security, possibly in

Although there has been excitement and fanfare over the recent BRICS meetings and proclamations, it is doubtful that these economies’ performance can match their rhetoric.
Original Article: Assessing the BRICS Expansion: Debunking Expectations

At the conclusion of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg on August 24, 2023, it was announced that the five-country grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, had invited six more countries to join: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Argentina. The new memberships, which will take effect in January 2024, were called “historic” by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, while Vladimir Putin, unable to travel due to an International Criminal Court warrant, remotely congratulated the new BRICS members and pledged to expand the group’s global influence.
Given the economic and political conditions in most of the member countries, however, as well as conflicts between them and diverging interests, the goals of the expanded BRICS group are largely unachievable. In

China rose from poverty after the Mao years only because its political leadership embraced private property and a market economy. Unfortunately, today the Communist leadership is moving back to socialism.

Original Article: The Chinese Economy: Market Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

In recent decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has boasted about having lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty; however, they were only able to do this because hundreds of millions of people had been living in poverty under its rule. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 until the economic reforms of the late 1970s, the country’s economy was almost entirely centrally planned. The government controlled the factors of production and determined what products were made, in what quantities they were made, and at what prices they were sold. As a result of these policies, the country remained very poor.
In 1978, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was $156 per year. In the same year, GDP per capita in the United States was $10,564.