After China’s President Xi Jinping was installed as head of the ruling Communist party at a congress five years ago, he signalled that the country was entering a “new normal” of single-digit economic growth. But one province of 34m people did not seem to receive the memo.
Giant infrastructure investments — thousands of kilometres of motorways, hundreds of kilometres of high-speed rail and two of the world’s tallest bridges — kept the economy of mountainous Guizhou expanding at double-digit annual rates.
Now Chen Min’er (pronounced Min-ar), the province’s former top official who oversaw that growth and an accompanying rise in local government debt, has a chance of reaching the highest echelon of power at a Communist party congress this week, according to analysts.