Caixin: "China’s flagship state newspaper has used a prominent pseudonymous commentary series to defend the country’s slowing economic growth and signal that Beijing will resist large-scale stimulus. Responding to market attention on macroeconomic policies, the articles stated that China will not rely on heavy stimulus fueled by high debt and deficits. Instead, Beijing will maintain targeted structural policies to avoid creating a policy “dependency.”" Everyone seems to have noticed the implications of this important People's Daily article. While it should have been obvious for many years that this "large-scale stimulus" had resulted in over a decade of low-quality growth and surging debt, it was never going to be politically easy to acknowledge it, and so it is good that Beijing is finally doing so, but I guess we will soon find out whether it is even possible to resist overspending without a too-rapid decline in "growth". If it isn't (and Im pretty sure it won't be), the important question is whether Beijing would rather give up the growth targets, or continue with a few more years of unsustainable spending.