The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China

by Kevin Rudd

By extending these selected policy liberalizations across the board to all China’s economic partners, it made them appear less as political concessions to Washington and more about China’s ongoing financial reforms. Finally, never wanting to take unnecessary political risks with the country’s overall economic growth rate, Xi also authorized stimulus measures to prop up growth, reinforced by repeated public assurances from China’s Central Bank governor that Beijing still had significant headroom in its fiscal- and monetary-policy settings to sustain economic growth in the vicinity of the politically sensitive 6 percent threshold. This figure reflected the party’s internal calculus of what was necessary to sustain employment for the growing supply of new graduates each year, improve living standards, and maintain overall social stability.