CCP releases previously unpublished comments by Xi about wealth in China

A Communist Party journal released remarks that Chinese President Xi Jinping made in December where he warned against the inappropriate accumulation of wealth and the risks it poses to a healthy economy. It’s not clear why these remarks are being published five months after the event.

According to Bloomberg, Xi said, “financial risks are a result of a lack of oversight in the governance of financial institutions; relaxed management of local debts; blind expansion by large enterprises and their excessive reliance on financial leverage; financial fraud; corruption; and a slowdown in economic growth.” He also underscored the need for attention to risks associated with real-estate developers and that while China shouldn’t allow “capital predators” to run rampant, the country needs to ensure the “orderly” growth of capital.

Key comments:

“Under my country’s socialist system, it is not only necessary to continuously liberate and develop social productive forces, and to continuously create and accumulate social wealth,” said Xi in the translated remarks, “but also to prevent polarization, and to earnestly promote the all-round development of human beings and the common prosperity of all people to achieve more obvious and substantial progress.”

“To achieve the goal of common prosperity, we must first make the ‘cake’ bigger and better through the joint efforts of the people of the whole country,” said Xi, “and then correctly handle the relationship between growth and distribution through reasonable institutional arrangements, so as to divide the ‘cake’ well.”