Finance & economics | Free exchange

China may soon become a high-income country

Has it truly escaped the middle-income trap?

CHINA IS HAUNTED by the spectre of the “middle-income trap”, the notion that emerging economies grow quickly out of poverty only to get stuck before they get rich. “During the next five years, we must take particular care to avoid falling into the middle-income trap,” said Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister, in 2016. Lou Jiwei, then China’s finance minister, once put the odds of China becoming ensnared at 50%.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The high kingdom”

How high will interest rates go?

From the February 5th 2022 edition

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

Explore the edition

Discover more

Could war in the Gulf push oil to $100 a barrel?

Missiles are flying over a region that supplies a third of the world’s crude

FRANCE-TRADITION-LEISURE-TOURISM

How bond investors soured on France

They now regard the euro zone’s second-largest economy as riskier than Spain



Why economic warfare nearly always misses its target

There is no such thing as a strategic commodity

A tonne of public debt is never made public

New research suggests governments routinely hide their borrowing