Mengjia Ren

Sep 15, 2023 | asiatimes.com | Lee Branstetter |Mengjia Ren |Guangwei Li

Governments around the world regularly spend an enormous amount of money subsidizing businesses. But few spend like China. A 2022 report suggests that China spends 1.7–5% of its GDP on industrial policies, more than most countries. As Chinese economy expert Nicolas Lardy shows, direct subsidies to Chinese listed companies have grown substantially from 5% of listed firms’ profits in 2010 to almost 14% in 2015. Our own calculations corroborate this upward trend.