China in 2024: Xi Jinping’s “Rejuvenation,” Control, and Self-Sufficiency Goals Intensify Economic Slowdown and Geopolitical Standoff

In 2024, China continued to grapple with slowing economic growth at home and hardening confrontation with the US-led coalition abroad. Xi Jinping initially responded to the real estate crisis and the associated weakness in private-sector investment and consumption primarily with accelerated, state-led investment in high-technology industries and supply chains. When this failed to stabilize the economy and achieve the 5% GDP growth target, Xi was forced to adopt a series of ad hoc macroeconomic stimulus measures. Xi’s characteristic information-control and surveillance efforts, military buildup and modernization, aggressive territorial dispute strategies, and tough diplomacy also continued. The US and its allies and partners responded with economic “derisking” and military containment policies. Action–reaction cycles spiraled downward across multiple policy dimensions, threatening China’s access to foreign technology, investment, and export markets and dividing the world more definitively along economic and geopolitical lines.