XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: China’s post-reform era has arrived — and its future is unclear.

“I tell the stream of visitors returning to China after the end of zero-COVID that we’ve entered a new era – the post reform era,” Dake Kang, a Beijing-based correspondent for the Associated Press, posted on social media platform X last week.

Even after the extremely strict pandemic-era controls were lifted earlier this year, “Beijing has clung to a strategy of accelerating government intervention in Chinese life,” Ian Johnson, a China expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote for Foreign Affairs last week.

China’s model of economic growth powered by manufacturing and infrastructure projects has run out of steam, and ideological crackdowns have crushed civil society, targeted foreign businesses and scared off investors.

Those trends have led to comparisons between Xi’s current policies and those that led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Yes, but: These challenges don’t necessarily mean China has now entered a period of decline.

It’s too soon to say whether China’s current economic doldrums are the start of a Soviet-style stagnation or just part of the business cycle but if it’s the latter, it would be the first time a country ruled by someone like Xi has dodged the former.