property there fell by over 40% last year. This in turn has been a drag on consumption because people feel poorer. Total retail sales in Tianshui slipped by a little over 5% in 2025. Gloomy walks through its malls reveal shuttered shops and empty restaurants. There is a risk that these trends, multiplied across China’s smaller cities, will cause the gaps between the country’s haves and have-nots to widen further. The economic slowdown seems to have hit the poor hardest, according to data compiled by Li Shi, a professor at Zhejiang University in the eastern city of Hangzhou. In a paper published in April he cited surveys showing that China’s bottom tenth of workers by income saw their wages rise by only 2% per year from 2018 to 2023, compared with an average annual growth rate of around 5%. China’s government knows that high-tech factories are not an economic panacea. Investment in machinery and other physical assets “has fuelled China’s economic boom, but its returns have gradually declined”, noted Xinhua, the official state news agency, earlier this year. China’s latest five- year plan, which was released in March and covers the period to 2030, called for “investing in people” as well as factories, to make the economy more equal. In practice, that would mean much more government spending on education, particularly for children from poor families, giving them the skills and knowledge to get better-paid jobs. But as the people of Tianshui would attest, that is easier said than done. The city’s budget is far smaller than those of wealthy places—it spends less than one-third of the amount per pupil in school that Beijing does, for example. And the economic downturn threatens to turn this into a cycle of decline; the city’s fiscal revenues fell by nearly a tenth last year. Few of Tianshui’s students ever make it to the country’s best universities. “It’s too difficult for children to compete here,” says Shi Tingting, the mother of a 12-year-old girl. “They end up trapped.” ■ Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//china/2026/06/02/chinas-high-tech-rise-is-leaving-much- of-the-country-behind
Xi Jinping gives China’s crack scientists new jobs inside government Tech rivalry is reshaping the ruling elite June 4th 2026 IT IS OFTEN said that China is ruled by engineers. In fact, it is ruled by people with engineering degrees. President Xi Jinping, who studied chemical engineering, has probably not looked at a flow chart since his university days. Upon leaving school he went to work in the government for one of his father’s old pals. Like Mr Xi, most of China’s top leaders have spent their adult lives climbing the ranks of the Communist Party. Now, as China races to beat America to new technologies, true boffins are being given more power. Some of China’s most prominent chemists, physicists and computer scientists are being drawn into the party’s upper ranks. Recent research by Li
Cheng and Zhao Xiuye of the University of Hong Kong shows that more “academicians”, an elite group of career scientists elected by China’s academic bodies, are joining the party leadership and government. The number of such scientists with seats on the party’s decision-making Central Committee has doubled in the past decade to 29 of the roughly 350 members. They are said to have been elevated to help set policies, and to guide capital and talent towards China’s innovation machine. Some of the experts remain in academia as presidents of universities and leaders of national laboratories. Others have hung up their lab coats for government jobs. Huang Ru, a leading specialist in microelectronics, spent most of her career as a professor at Peking University. This year Ms Huang was made a vice-chair of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the state planning agency, to oversee efforts to build home-grown semiconductors. She joins Xiangli Bin. Though not formally an “academician”, he helped build Beidou (China’s answer to America’s GPS navigation system). Mr Xiangli was appointed vice-chair in 2024 and helps implement innovation policy. The drive for technological self-reliance is a whole-of-government effort. Huai Jinpeng, the education minister, for example, is an expert in networked computing systems of the sort needed to link up data centres. His deputy minister is a physicist who was most recently in charge of Zhejiang University, known for turning out talented engineers for China’s artificial- intelligence labs. Both have seats on the Central Committee. It is likely that some of the academicians are members of an opaque party body called the Central Science and Technology Commission, created in 2023 to bring China’s innovation drive directly under party control. So far, Messrs Li and Zhao noted in a report for ThinkChina, a news site, that no recognised academician has made it onto the party’s 24-member Politburo. Yet that body, too, has grown brainier: five of its members selected in 2022 could boast of serious scientific careers. The personnel changes reflect a push to bring patriotic outside talent into policymaking in a critical area. Qian Xuesen, the father of China’s project to acquire ballistic missiles, was given a seat on the Central Committee in 1969. As it was then, competition with America may be a disciplining factor
today. Whereas other areas of policy, such as the economy, can be beset by ideological miasma, China’s leadership demands results from its campaign to build new technologies. A technocratic approach may offer related advantages. Bringing in outsiders may also be politically convenient. Academics often lack deep networks inside the government and are therefore politically weak and unthreatening to those who hold power. It also means they are less likely to be part of corrupt cliques. Back in 2022, anti-corruption authorities cleaned out a network of officials in charge of disbursing the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, known as the “Big Fund”, for apparently pilfering from its 343bn yuan ($51bn) in assets. A new team has been brought in to manage semiconductor industrial policy as a result, say analysts. Is the push for technological self-reliance creating a new glidepath into China’s ruling elite? The party has long grappled with how to select cadres that are both politically trusted and technically competent. Under the rule of Mao Zedong, those with revolutionary credentials (“reds”) were pitted against the intelligentsia (“experts”). At the next five-yearly party congress, to be held in 2027, Mr Xi will once again reshuffle the leadership ranks. The best advice for ambitious reds may be to become a little more expert. ■ Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//china/2026/06/04/xi-jinping-gives-chinas-crack- scientists-new-jobs-inside-government
Ma Ning will proudly represent China at the World Cup The referee is succeeding where the men’s national team is not June 4th 2026 WITH A PHOTO from an aeroplane window and the caption “I’m ready, are you ready?”, Ma Ning, a Chinese football referee, announced his departure for Miami and this year’s World Cup. China’s footballers will not be joining him. The men’s team has not qualified for a World Cup since 2002, when it crashed out without scoring a goal. Though the country struggles to get its players to football’s biggest tournament, it has become unexpectedly adept at producing referees. Mr Ma hails from Liaoning, in China’s rust belt. The province was once the heartland of heavy industry and state-owned enterprises, earning a reputation for bureaucracy and respect for procedure. Whether by temperament or
upbringing, Mr Ma, nicknamed “Card Master”, has made a career out of taking rules seriously. Supporters celebrate his willingness to punish offenders regardless of status or consequence; critics say he likes the limelight. Few referees attract as much scrutiny. His breakthrough came in 2015, when he issued nine yellow cards and three red ones in a single match. Just last month supporters of Shanghai Port, a club in China’s top league, marked Mother’s Day by chanting insults about his mother. The abuse quickly spread online but Mr Ma appeared untroubled. The hostility has done little to impede his notable ascent. In 2024 he became the first Chinese referee to oversee an Asian Cup final. And football officials in China have defended his decisions from backlashes. It will be his second consecutive appearance at the World Cup and may mark his debut as a referee at the tournament (previously he served as a fourth official). The strangest consequence of Mr Ma’s rise is the faith some supporters place in his impartiality. Unlike referees who may worry about the repercussions of their decisions for their own national teams in the World Cup, Mr Ma faces no such dilemma. China is unlikely to appear in the tournament soon. He has little to lose and much to gain. Despite being 46 years old, he does not seem to be eyeing retirement. As sponsorship deals accumulate and followers flock to his newly created social-media accounts, Mr Ma’s success has become a story in its own right. Chinese men’s football, despite years of reform and personal backing from Xi Jinping, remains synonymous with corruption scandals, administrative dysfunction and chronic underachievement. For a country of 1.4bn people, China’s most successful representative in world football is not scoring goals. But he’s meeting his own regardless. ■ Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//china/2026/06/04/ma-ning-will-proudly-represent-china- at-the-world-cup
China’s delivery drivers are its most obvious underclass New rules aim to help but the economy will keep them down June 4th 2026 CHINESE CITIES can look like a tableau of bold colours as delivery drivers on scooters—some yellow, orange or blue—zip through traffic bearing cargo to waiting customers. It is in the distant outskirts that the colours come to a rest. Amid the warrens of buildings, drivers rent cheap rooms, parking their scooters in the narrow streets and hanging their matching jackets from windows to air them out. One colour absent from their uniforms—each associated with a different delivery service—is gloomy grey. But speak to them as they return home, and that is the dominant hue. For years the delivery industry attracted strivers who knew they could earn more than in factory jobs or who wanted