Shanghai Exactly a year ago, Premier Li Keqiang set out the case for difficult industrial overhauls. This is not nail-clipping, he warned, its like taking a knife to ones own flesh.
The comments recalled his fearsome predecessor Zhu Rongji who eliminated 30 million jobs practically in one go in a clean-up of state enterprises in the late 1990s.
But Mr. Li has yet to follow through. The problems he was grappling with back then have all gotten much worse colossal industrial overcapacity, soaring corporate debt, plunging profits, declining factory prices. His reluctance to draw blood underscores a critical change that has come over a Chinese leadership that once had a reputation for pursuing economic goals with ruthless pragmatism. …
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