Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it.
For the second time since coming to power in 2012, President Xi Jinping visited Guangdong province in southern China this week, completing a three-day tour of the manufacturing hub. Timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the beginning of China’s “reform and opening up” process, his itinerary essentially re-traced the steps of Deng Xiaoping’s legendary 1992 Southern Tour, in which the reformist leader, then 88 and retired from politics, publicly reiterated the importance of continuing his economic policies.
Xi might have felt some pressure to make an economic pronouncement of his own. His trip began shortly after China’s latest quarterly figures, released Friday, indicated that growth has slowed to its lowest rate since early 2009.