This week’s cover | Aug 26th 2023 Edition

Our worldwide cover this week asks what has gone wrong in China?

After China rejoined the world economy in 1978, its growth story became the most spectacular in history. Farm reform, industrialisation and rising incomes lifted nearly 800m people out of extreme poverty. Yet instead of roaring back after the government abandoned its “zero-covid” policy at the end of 2022, China is lurching from one ditch to the next. This cover had to do a lot of work. It is hardly news that the country is in trouble. In recent months we have written extensively about the property market, consumer-technology companies, economic confrontation with America and, most recently, how young Chinese are fed up. 

We therefore needed the cover to make clear that we were bringing something new to the story.