The startling rise to wealth of the nation’s entrepreneurs has been an affront to Beijing’s political philosophy and increasingly, a threat to the communist party
In a Politburo group study session on 23 November 2015, China’s president, Xi Jinping, recommended the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French economist Thomas Piketty. “The rich data he used demonstrated that … unrestrained capitalism accelerates wealth inequality … [His] conclusion is worth us pondering on.”
Back then, Piketty’s work on inequality was reported all over the world and sparked soul-searching among elites from Wall Street to Main Street. Some were surprised that Xi was paying attention, too.