The Chinese economy grew by 5% in 2025, early estimates released on Wednesday showed.

That’s a joke. And it’s funny if you get it.

There was a time when I pretended the CCP’s annual bullsh-t-a-thon was worth the copious financial media coverage it invariably receives despite being overtly farcical and discreetly sinister. Here’s — I don’t know, whatever the number is — 3,000 or so, sullen-looking apparatchiks with ID badges clipped to their jackets all packed into a cavernous lecture hall, where they’re spaced evenly apart in assigned seats with name plates (because the ID badges aren’t enough). Each gets a notepad and one cup of tea on a saucer.

You sit there, and you listen, and when prompted, you express restrained, but nevertheless unqualified, approval for what the speakers are saying, which means that before you go in, you need to have your earnest countenance down pat. Practice “resolutely agree” in the mirror for at least a week ahead of time, and practice it like your life depends on it, because goddammit, it very well might. It’s the worst business convention you’ve ever attended, and if you fall asleep, you’ll be shot. Not literally, although… well, who knows.

That’s the National People’s Congress, and it’s in full swing. On Wednesday, Li Qiang — Xi Jinping’s No. 2 — regaled a captive audience with the government’s annual work report, which includes key numbers like the growth target. This year, it’s — drumroll — 5%, the same as it’s been since 2022.

As a reminder, growth was 5% in 2024, according to the Party, and 5.2% the year before that. The figure, above, shows you the recent history of the target and the outcome.

If you’re new to this charade and your question is, “How’s that possible? How’s it possible to manage an economy the size of China’s such that growth outcomes end up that close to a GDP target announced just three months into a calendar year?”, the answer’s that it’s obviously not. It’s not possible. This is unadulterated farce. Pure parody.

If your next question is, “Wait, does that mean every ‘Chief China Economist’ at banks all over the world is engaged in the perpetuation of something they all know is manifestly preposterous?”, the answer’s “Yes.” Unfortunately.

It’s self-evidently ridiculous to suggest a panel of seven people can manage the world’s second-largest economy around a specific, pre-set growth target. That assumes for the Standing Committee a type of omnipotence the Greeks didn’t even assume for their gods and a type of omnipotence I doubt the Party even assumes for itself.

What you’re seeing in these growth targets and outcomes is an autocratic government managing down expectations for an economy marking a transition from emerging to developed. You can’t take the figures literally. Because they simply aren’t that.

It’s best to view this exercise as a form of regime maintenance. The Party’s projecting predictability and stability vis-à-vis economic outcomes because the legitimacy of one-party rule depends entirely on an unwritten social contract where Chinese cede most civil liberties in exchange for steady quality-of-life improvements.

Economically, then, nothing can be left to chance. The public has to believe the situation’s under control, and that a decent outcome’s preordained. A nervous populace is a restive populace, and a restive populace is a populace which might start to get “bad” ideas about a change of government. Who knows, they might even revolt. Stranger things have happened. You don’t want to get there if you’re the CCP, because if you get there, you only have two choices: Abdicate or kill everybody, and if you abdicate, there’s a good chance they’ll kill you, so what’s a totalitarian to do?

Of course, everything’s always left to chance. That’s life. It’s uncertain. You can’t guarantee economic outcomes, and the main point of friction in China currently is the tension between the middle-class’s penchant for the sort of aspirational upward mobility that typifies Western consumerism and Xi’s pretensions to what he calls “common prosperity” and expressed aversion to “hedonistic” lifestyles.

If China’s going to succeed in marking a full transition from the old smokestack growth blueprint to a consumption-driven model, something’s gotta give, particularly given the footprint of high-end luxury brands in the Chinese market. You can’t say, “Here, look at this stuff!” and then turn around and tell people “Don’t buy that same stuff, or if you do, you can’t flaunt it.” The genie’s out of the bottle, and Xi would do well to stop trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, to mix metaphors.

China desperately needs to revive the domestic spending impulse in order to stave off deflation, and while it’d be great if that can be accomplished through the kind of spending that’s consistent with Xi’s anodyne economic egalitarianism, that’s just not how it works. You need animal spirits, at the risk of conjuring a capitalist cliché to critique a communist system (although that’s kinda the point here). Colloquially: You need to inject some life into the situation, and you’re not going to get that from — whatever the Party’s floating now — washing machine rebates and refrigerator subsidies.

That doesn’t mean you have to send everybody Miu Miu gift certificates, but if you’re going to spend the better part of four years dialing up the oppression (which is what Xi did), you can’t just turn around one day and say, “We need you to get happy now, because it looks like the economy’s sinking into deflation and an American president’s determined to torpedo our exports.”

Li on Wednesday said China will run a 4% deficit this year, the widest on record and above the 3% threshold the Party tends to view as a red line for red ink. That, in turn, points to more stimulus, a lot of which will presumably be earmarked for initiatives designed to resuscitate spending. But at the end of the day, if you want to revive the collective joie de vivre, you gotta let people live.