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The reasons: China’s ageing workforce, newly protectionist trade policies, and Xi’s authoritarian leadership. These growth brakes will cost China the equivalent of a year’s economic output, $US18 trillion ($27 trillion), in the decade starting 2025, according to the think tank.
Its analysts see no convergence between the US and Chinese economies. A $US5 trillion-a-year economic gap will persist for the foreseeable future, it predicts. If correct, this should allow the US to preserve its global geostrategic leadership for decades.
Xi’s nationalism, according to the analysis, is driving the problem. After joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001 — a step that economic liberals saw as irreversible towards China’s incorporation into the global economy — China’s military and diplomatic expansionism is costing it access to advanced American technology