Excerpt
March 14, 2024, Audio: "Harvard Kennedy School Professor Rana Mitter and Harvard Business School Associate Professor say that after decades of tremendous growth, an economically slowing China is the new normal. With a growing debt-to-GDP ratio, an aging population, a devastating real estate bubble, and a loss of confidence among both foreign investors and domestic consumers, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party face a daunting array of thorny problems—including ones of their own making resulting from the one-child law and other home-grown policies. So how should the United States and other Western countries respond? Is it a moment China's rivals can use to their advantage, or one where great power rivalry can give way to great power cooperation? And how will an economic slowdown affect China’s geopolitical ambitions, and is an annexation of Taiwan now more or less likely? Mitter is a historian and the S.T. Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations at the Kennedy School and the former director of the China Center at Oxford University. Rithmire is a political scientist who studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on Asia, and China in particular. They join host Ralph Ranalli to explore some of the underlying reasons behind the country’s current malaise, and to offer some policy ideas to help create a positive outcome with relations with China moving forward."