March 10, 2025, Beijing Great Hall of the People—A security guard stands at the entrance before the closing ceremony of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. (WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)
[People News] Xi Jinping chaired the Politburo meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on December 8, which primarily focused on analysing and planning economic work for 2026.
The Communist Party's economy is firmly positioned on the edge of a volcano.
Typically, the December Politburo meeting serves as an economic briefing at the end of the year, setting the tone for the forthcoming Central Economic Work Conference. The communiqué released by the party media is over 1,200 words long and mentions the term 'stability' 12 times. In essence, the key messages from this meeting can be summarised as: 'Maintain stability without panic in 2025' and 'Maintain stability without panic in 2026.'
The meeting characterized this year's economic performance as 'overall stable, with progress amid stability,' noting that over the past five years, there has been an 'effective response to various shocks and challenges,' and that both 'hard power in economy, technology, and national defense, as well as soft power in culture, systems, and diplomacy, have significantly improved.' This indicates that stability has been achieved, with no signs of panic or collapse.
Indeed, over these five years, Xi Jinping has not only eradicated the virus but has also dismantled the real estate sector and the Chinese economy, undermined the 'one country, two systems' framework in Hong Kong, removed Li Keqiang, disrupted Sino-U.S. relations, and diminished his own military authority. He has truly stabilised the situation, firmly sitting on the edge of the volcano.
The party media communiqué highlighted that next year's economic work will 'adhere to the general principle of seeking progress while maintaining stability,' and will 'continuously prevent and resolve risks in key areas, focusing on stabilising employment, enterprises, markets, and expectations.' In summary, the message is to maintain stability without panic.
In July 2018, the Chinese Communist Party introduced the concept of the "Six Stabilities" during a political meeting, which aimed to "stabilise employment, stabilise finance, stabilise foreign trade, stabilise foreign investment, stabilise investment, and stabilise expectations." However, the "Six Stabilities" were later condensed into the "Four Stabilities," with the aspects of stabilising finance, foreign trade, foreign investment, and investment being dropped.
This omission occurred because these areas could not be stabilised at all. The decline in real estate taxes has directly resulted in a steep drop in investment and a significant rise in financial risks. Additionally, the China-U.S. tariff war and aggressive diplomatic strategies have raised alarms for foreign trade, leading to a chaotic response from foreign investors.
Can the "Four Stabilities" be effectively maintained? The focus on "stabilising employment, stabilising enterprises, stabilising the market, and stabilising expectations" highlights a critical issue: without expectations, there is no market; without a market, there are no enterprises; and without enterprises, there is no employment. This creates a chain reaction that, once ignited, could lead to ongoing turmoil. This situation serves not only as a policy signal but also reflects deep concerns among the Communist Party's senior leadership regarding an economic "legitimacy crisis."
From Last Year’s “Extraordinary” Big Stimulus to This Year’s “Moderate” Letdown
On December 9, 2024, at a meeting of the CCP Politburo setting the tone for 2025’s economic work, Beijing unusually released a strongly “above-expectations” signal. For the first time in 16 years, it proposed a “moderately loose monetary policy,” paired with an “active fiscal policy,” and emphasised “extraordinary counter-cyclical adjustments.” In plain terms: massive fiscal and monetary easing—flood-style stimulus.
Not surprisingly, fiscal financing in 2025 hit a historic high. Net government bond financing reached 14.36 trillion yuan, estimated at 10.2% of GDP. Broad fiscal expenditures in the first three quarters rose 7.9% year-on-year, the highest in recent years. By the end of October 2025, China’s M2 money supply stood at roughly 335 trillion yuan, up 8.20% year-on-year.
But what about the results? China’s PMI data for October 2025 showed a manufacturing PMI of 49.0%, with large, medium, and small enterprise PMIs all below the 50% threshold—49.9%, 48.7%, and 47.1% respectively. The production index (49.7%), new orders index (48.8%), raw material inventory index, and employment index all remained in contraction. Supplier delivery times were exactly at the threshold.
The CPI averaged –0.1% year-on-year from January to October 2025, with October alone at +0.2%, mainly due to falling food, tobacco, and alcohol prices. The PPI averaged –2.7% year-on-year. These indicators show the economy is still stuck in deflation.
On December 8, 2025, the Politburo announced that next year China will “continue implementing a more proactive fiscal policy and moderately loose monetary policy, leverage both existing and new policies, strengthen counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments, and truly improve macroeconomic governance.” In plain language: next year we’ll keep printing money and injecting liquidity; deficits can widen; even breaking the 4% deficit ratio is fine. But we shouldn’t spray money everywhere for no short-term effect—we’ll target long-term projects instead: tech self-reliance, green transition, common prosperity, etc. In short: interest rate cuts, reserve-ratio cuts, more bond issuance, big infrastructure; plus supply-side reform, tech investment, income distribution reform; and heavy political messaging—determined to turn “a thousand holes” into “total destruction.”
Real Estate Vanishes Again from Policy Documents
This Politburo meeting made no mention of real estate. In contrast, the Politburo in September last year focused heavily on stabilising the property market—interest-rate cuts, down-payment cuts, relaxed purchase restrictions. The December 2024 Central Economic Work Conference also vowed to stabilise the housing market and accelerate urban village and shantytown renovation. But every mini-rebound in the housing market has been extremely short-lived. Home prices continue to fall. According to the PBoC’s Q3 2025 Urban Depositors Survey, less than 10% of respondents expected home prices to rise for two consecutive quarters, hitting the lowest confidence level since 2019.
In July this year, the Politburo unusually omitted real estate altogether. The earlier National Urban Work Conference hinted that the housing sector will shift from new construction to maintenance and renewal. This latest meeting again avoided the topic, only stressing “preventing and resolving risks.”
How to “resolve risks”? The CCP’s number-one trick: shut people up. Recently, the Shanghai Cyberspace Administration announced a “Special Rectification Campaign to Regulate Online Real Estate Information.” Platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili were instructed to self-inspect and remove more than 40,000 pieces of content “talking down the property market or misinterpreting real-estate policy,” as well as 70,000+ accounts and 1,200+ livestream rooms.
The Five People Busier Than the CCP Politburo Standing Committee
The meeting began by claiming that this year’s main economic and social development goals “will be successfully achieved”—meaning the 5% GDP growth target is absolutely guaranteed.
One can certainly trust the National Bureau of Statistics—data fabrication and data padding are standard operating procedures for the NBS and local governments. They are also convenient channels for illicit chains within the system.
In the past two days, a hilarious incident went viral: The “five busiest people on the entire internet.” From Baidu Wenku’s document 10,000 Common Chinese Names, the first five names—Zhang Jiwei, Lin Guorui, Lin Wenshu, Lin Yanan, Jiang Yiyun—were discovered appearing everywhere: sometimes as government procurement review experts, sometimes sweeping up awards in vocal performance and calligraphy competitions, sometimes winning international robotics competitions, sometimes listed in welfare lottery charity projects, even appearing in administrative penalty announcements. The amounts involved ranged from a few hundred yuan to tens of millions. The same group of names appeared across regions, fields, and years—running around “attending events”—an absurdity beyond parody.
The system’s fraud has reached new heights: laziness taken to the extreme. They simply copied and pasted the first five names from a list—didn’t even bother scrolling down two lines. For so many internal editors to coincidentally use the exact same five names—what kind of system produces such perfectly synchronised stupidity? It should be submitted to the Guinness World Records.
Netizens joked that these five people are busier than the Politburo Standing Committee members. But the real joke is that those very Standing Committee members are also full of lies—onstage or offstage—because the CCP system runs on deception.
(First published by People News)
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