One such “mistake” was the big infrastructure programme of 2008-09, which helped China recover quickly from the global financial crisis, but also began the pile-up of local-government debt

Haven’t these guys been fear mongering about Chinese debt? Then why is “mistake” in quotation marks?

But this new debt will refinance some local debt and subsidise households and businesses to trade in old appliances and equipment for new. Its function is to make investment more effective, not to give consumer demand a bigger role.

Nice to see that the cpc has found a balanced approach to the problem of the “slump”/“overcapacity”.