A very Chinese coup

TO MANY foreigners, Li Keqiang’s appointment as prime minister in 2013 was a reassuring choice for a job they assumed would involve day-to-day running of the world’s second-largest economy. A trained economist, he had played a big role in helping the World Bank and a government think-tank produce a joint report calling for bold economic reforms. A few years earlier, as a provincial leader, he had helped two areas achieve faster growth (which he daringly calculated by measuring electricity consumption, rail cargo and loans—rather than by using the government’s “man-made” statistics). Likonomics, as even some state-controlled media took to calling it, looked pretty likeable.

This summer it seemed less so. Apparent blunders by economic policymakers shook global confidence in China. In July the Communist Party clumsily attempted to prop up the country’s plunging stockmarkets—a largely futile move which it eventually abandoned. Soon after, without warning or immediate explanation, the People’s Bank of China devalued the yuan by 2%, triggering a wave of panic selling across world markets.