Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech on Tuesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing marked the 40th anniversary of a watershed moment in modern Chinese history. At a meeting in December 1978, Deng Xiaoping and other reformist Communist Party leaders, who had fallen from grace during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, laid the groundwork for the program of economic liberalization that later became officially known as “reform and opening up.”
Four decades later, amid slowing economic growth and a bruising trade war with the United States, Xi showed no inclination toward deepening China’s market-oriented reforms. Despite plenty of vague proclamations like “opening brings progress while closure leads to backwardness,” he did not propose any specific new measures in his nearly 90-minute speech. As The New York Times notes in its coverage, speeches like this are not traditionally used to make concrete policy announcements in China, but that did not stop some investors from getting their hopes up. Asian stock markets fell as the main thrust of Xi’s speech became clear.