I think Pettis is fundamentally correct that the Party is badly bungling the same transition that Japan failed to navigate, Germany has avoided by vassalizing the Eurozone, and Taiwan and South Korea are only partially starting to make.

They are utterly, hopelessly addicted to investment in fixed capital goods for growth, and there is an increasingly wide gulf between the growth in living standards enjoyed by ordinary people and the raw GDP growth data.

Whether they can start actually making demand-side policy and facilitating income transfers from, most especially, the state to the people, is... doubtful, to my mind.