CHINA-LEADERSHIP: CHINESE PROFESSOR CRITICISES STATE OF CHINA'S ECONOMY
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On December 16, Prof. Xiang Songzuo (向松祚) of Renmin University School of Finance and former Chief Economist of China Agriculture Bank, gave a 25-minute speech during a CEO class at Renmin Business School , which was immediately censored over the Chinese internet. Prof. Xiang Songzuo singled out 2018 as the year when China comes to a large shift in its economy and politics unprecedented over the past 40 years. The speech is being compared with that of Tsinghua law professor Xu Zhangrun’s “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes”, and being described as another rare burst of Chinese intellectuals’ discontent with the direction the country is taking under Xi Jinping. Highlights of Prof. Xiang Songzuo's speech included his disclosure of China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figure of China's GDP as 6.5 percent and disclosure that a "research group of an important institution" released an internal report stating China’s GDP growth this year was about 1.67 percent while yet another calculation showed the growth rate was negative. He also referred to the poor state of private businesses in China.
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