Putting growth on the back burner

Question: How may China position itself moving forward?

Ihab Salib: It's been a very challenging period for China. Number one, you had slowing growth, the economy's maturing, and you can't grow at 7, 8% forever. You had the geopolitical risks, increasing as it relates to Taiwan, for example. And you had on top of that a real estate crisis. So going forward, we think there's going to be less focus on growth, which was the number one goal for the Chinese leadership over the past multiple decades, and more focus on security, whether it's energy security, food security, or just presenting themselves as a global power on the world stage. That's likely to be the focus going forward. Having said that, that doesn't mean they're going to do any radical changes. The Chinese leadership knows that they're much more connected to the global economy than Russia, for example. And for them to achieve their goals, they'll have to have prudent policies that don't alienate them from the global economy.