China's Delicate Political Position Amid Reform

In the second installment of a series on China's transformation, we turn our attention inward and to the present, examining the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to retain its legitimacy by creating a highly effective, centralized government. As Stratfor has written before, the beginning of a slowdown in China's property sector in March 2014 ushered China into a new stage in its evolution. The question is no longer whether its longtime growth model, based on low-cost exports and investment, is sustainable. Rather, it whether and how the government can maintain political order as the economy shifts, as Beijing hopes it will, from one growth model to a new one. In short, can the Chinese government adapt quickly and effectively enough to China's new economic reality to stay in power?...