China’s economic script is eclectic and continuously adapting to changing circumstances. It combines both liberal, statist and socialist elements and the weight of each has varied both across time and between sectors. In the course of China’s great transformation, Chinese leaders have sought to strike a balance between pro-innovation policies and interventionist measures. In the Xi Jinping era, the pendulum has swung in the direction of tighter control and more market interventionist policies, although there is often a pronounced gap between the declaratory socialist proclamations of recent years and actual economic developments on the ground.

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