Xi is tanking China’s economy. That’s bad for the U.S.

For the past decade, Americans have worried increasingly about China, not least because Chinese President Xi Jinping has centralized power, silenced critics, stalled private-sector reforms and taken an increasingly combative posture toward the rest of the world. China was set to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economic power by 2035, Mr. Xi predicted; China would then retake its rightful position at the center of world affairs.

Instead, Mr. Xi’s China is less free, less prosperous and less competently governed than it would have been had he taken a different course — one not inspired by rivalry with the West or fear of his own people. Economic and demographic data show that a China-dominated world is even less likely than it ever was. Economists have started revising their predictions on when China might overtake the U.S. economically — and if it ever will.

Despite Mr. Xi lifting the world’s most draconian covid-19 restrictions at the end of 2022, construction in China has slowed, manufacturing prices have declined and consumer spending has flattened. China’s stock market has lost $6 trillion in value in three years. A dozen cities and provinces have been told to halt construction of infrastructure projects — cutting into their main source of revenue.

The biggest economic threat has come from the slowdown in the property market. Building has slowed, and more than 50 major developers are either out of cash or have defaulted.

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