CHINA 2021: COPING WITH THE RESILIENCE DILEMMA OF THE CHINESE MODEL

Abstract

In 2021 Chinese internal politics were dominated by the domestic economy and the COVID-19 pandemic. The celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worked well to project the numerous successes of Chinese politics through history. Yet, Beijing’s insistence on the need to rethink the developmental path of China’s economic model also demonstrates the extent to which the important engines that have driven China’s growth in the past four decades must now be diverted to an internal dimension. This is the case of the dual circulation strategy and the common prosperity policy, whose guidelines are envisioned by Chinese leaders and political elites to transform the country’s existing growth model through a fully fledged internal rebalancing, and which spared not even the once unscrutinized, cross-border flow of data coming out of China.