The Boao Forum for Asia annual conference has been going for years, but never has China’s aspiration for a greater role on the world stage been more in evidence, nor its growing clout in the global economy and financial markets more visible.
China has a lot of money and the (perhaps artificially) low cost of capital is one of its advantages in contrast to, say, India, the other giant of the region. In the past, other nations have used money to buy friends, but never on the scale of China.
Little did it matter that China has yet to work out some of the finer logistical points of organising the annual equivalent of Davos. Nor did it seem relevant that some analysts are downgrading their assessment of China’s might, noting that the economic slowdown is broader and deeper than the numbers indicate. (They also suggest that the mainland will be one more case study of an economy that failed to break through the so-called middle income trap and achieve truly high standards of living for the bulk of its people.)