Is China the answer? This is the title of a 2013 Caribbean Business article in which I was quoted (sorry, no links available!). As it did back then, the question is one that must be answered with another question: “The answer to what?” The context in which the question is answered, however, has changed dramatically in the nine years since that article was published.
The article’s publication date is September 26, 2013. Those were the early days of the Xi Jinping era, when there was still much speculation about what Xi’s leadership would bring. For most foreign businesses, there was little to suggest things would significantly change, as far as their China aspirations went. If anything, a little optimism was in order, with suggestions in Western media that Xi might be a reformer:
Can Xi reform the system, without – like Gorbachev – destroying it? He has advantages that Gorbachev