Complacency, protectionism: Why China won’t shut underused factories

21 February 2016 / The Washington Post reports that, “China’s industrial overcapacity is “sucking the oxygen out” of its economy, fueling a dangerous buildup in bad loans and now exacerbating trade tensions with the West. Yet although the Communist Party has been aware of the problem for years, it has failed to tackle it. Those are the findings of a new report by the European Chamber of Commerce in China that blames complacency, a lack of leadership and protectionism by local governments for China’s failure to address the problem. (...) The answer, [Chamber president Jörg Wuttke] said, was for the Chinese government to relinquish control of the economy to market forces, as it has promised to do." Read the full article here.