China’s annual parliamentary session convenes this week amid a sombre mood that recalls the late 1990s: an era of economic ructions, rising debt, currency jitters and talk of mass lay-offs.
Zhu Rongji, the economic tsar who helped steer the economy through that transformative period, was bold. On his watch 30m were laid off, hundreds of state-owned enterprises privatised and thousands more consigned to history.
The National People’s Congress, which kicks off this weekend, will see whether China’s leaders are up to the task this time. Premier Li Keqiang has prepared the ground: overcapacity has become the mantra in recent months and in the past few days the Communist party has openly started to discuss lay-offs, up to 6m by some estimates.
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