Communist China is celebrating its 75th birthday. But not everyone is in the party spirit

For much of the past year since China reopened to the world following the Covid-19 pandemic, a pall has hung over large swathes of the country as its economy struggles to regain momentum.

For much of the past year since China reopened to the world following the Covid-19 pandemic, a pall has hung over large swathes of the country as its economy struggles to regain momentum. The country’s bright young minds are having a hard time landing a job; its white-collar professionals are hit by pay cuts and layoffs; its entrepreneurs struggle to finance their businesses and pay off debts; its middle-class families are seeing their wealth slashed by crumbling housing prices; and its rich race to move money out of the country. In the months leading up to the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on Tuesday, the mood was encapsulated by a new buzz phrase: “the garbage time of history.” Like the final minutes of a basketball game with one team trailing so far behind that all efforts to win seem futile, some Chinese believe their country is trapped in a similarly bleak period with little hope for a turnaround. The pessimism was a far cry from the buoyant outlook just five years ago, during the last major National Day celebrations in 2019. Back then, economists were rushing to predict when China might overtake the United States to become the world’s largest economy. Those conversations aren’t happening much anymore. These days, the talk centers on how Beijing can avoid a repeat of Japan’s “lost decade” of economic stagnation following bursting of its housing bubble in the 1990s. Last week, after months of increasingly grim economic data, Chinese leader Xi Jinping finally gave the nod to a much-needed stimulus package in a bid to shore up faith in the world’s second largest economy. On Tuesday, the country’s central bank unveiled a raft of measures to counter falling prices, including freeing commercial banks to lend more money and making it cheaper for households and companies to borrow.