Finance & economics | The incubator state

Xi Jinping’s bold plan for China’s next phase of innovation

If it works, the strategy will redraw the country’s economic map

|SHANGHAI

THINGS ARE looking bright for Zhuzhou. The city of 4m people in landlocked Hunan province has often caught the runoff of industrial business from the more populous provincial capital, Changsha, to its north. In the 1990s it became a regional hub for chemicals and metals production. But that caused horrible environmental destruction; more than 1,000 polluters were eventually shut down, with dire economic consequences. Zhuzhou’s inland economy has remained behind that of coastal cities. Over the past decade its moderate growth has been typical of the mid-tier cities that dot China’s interior.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Xi’s incubator state”

What China is getting wrong: It’s not just covid

From the April 16th 2022 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Finance & economics

A padlock made from red bricks against a green background

Don’t count on monetary policy to make housing affordable

Unless housebuilding picks up, neither cheap nor dear money will bring relief

A person walks in front of the Central Bank of Brazil headquarters in Brasilia

Why Brazil’s currency is plunging

Fiscal and monetary policy are now pitted against one another


A charity worker holds a mosquito net which covers the whole of the photograph with locals smiling in the background. Distribution day in Maracha and Terego, Uganda.

The search for the world’s most efficient charities

What the data say about doing good well


Conflict is remaking the Middle East’s economic order

Iran is boxed in as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey look to capitalise

Ukraine is winning the economic war against Russia

Whether that lasts depends on its ability to overcome acute shortages of power, men and money

The World Bank is struggling to serve all 78 poor countries

Bangladesh and Niger are very different places