Could China Become Like Japan in the Early 1990s?

May 6, 2023, Opinion: "Chinese leader Xi Jinping has fixated on the 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union and how to avoid the same fate for the Chinese economy. Would he instead have done better to study Japan and its lost decades beginning in the early 1990s? Should Xi now be thinking about the implications of his country’s massive debt, declining trade surpluses with the United States and Europe, and collapse in mortgage borrowing, not to mention China’s dismal demographic outlook and other challenges? Should the rest of the world be worried about the loss, or potential slowdown, of one of the major global growth engines? Chinese officials, meanwhile, are spinning a much more encouraging scenario. What do you believe?."