Prelude To China's 20th National Congress

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, to be convened in the second half of 2022, is expected to chart the course for the next phase of China's development. Its prelude comes at a time of unprecedented challenges to steady economic growth stemming from the global and domestic landscapes.

For much of the past two years, China had an enviable record of keeping the pandemic at bay with its zero-COVID strategies. Nonetheless, the first half of 2022 saw China succumb to the fast-spreading Omicron variant, with lockdown measures imposed in major manufacturing hubs such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Dongguan, thereby disrupting the global supply chains and stagnating domestic consumption. Macroeconomic uncertainties are further exacerbated by high-profile defaults of debt-ridden Chinese property developers beginning with Evergrande and Shimao, with analysts forecasting a close to one third default rate in the once-hot Chinese property market. Global factors