On February 19, 2025, the Centre for Asia and Globalisation hosted a roundtable that asked, “Is China on the Brink of a ‘Lost Decade’?”. The speaker for the roundtable was Mr Stewart Paterson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation, while the roundtable was moderated by Dr Denis Hew, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,
In his talk, Mr Paterson argued that China’s current economy shared stark similarities with Japan’s economy in the late 1980s, and was similarly at risk of undergoing a period of economic stagnation not unlike Japan’s ‘Lost Decade’ in the 1990s. While the Chinese government could implement solutions to avoid Japan’s fate—including undertaking structural reforms to reorient the economy towards a consumer-driven one, or alternatively boosting consumption by increasing welfare spending—Mr Paterson argued that the Chinese state was unlikely to enact such changes due to political reasons, making it more likely that China would undergo a period of economic stagnation. But this, he said, could provide more economic opportunities than risk for countries in Southeast Asia, especially in higher value-added manufacturing.