2/9 the year because – given trade and domestic investment constraints – more of the supply-side spending it had long preferred wouldn’t allow it to achieve the 2024 GDP growth target.

3/9 Most China analysts strongly disagreed on the grounds that Beijing was unalterably opposed to “the idleness-breeding trap of welfarism”, and so would never initiate such a spending program, but I argued that the choice facing Beijing wasn’t between welfarism and...