That's a myth.
The intended reforms of Xi and his English fluent prime minister Li Keqiang have failed because Chinese people won't increase their household spending anywhere near enough to stimulate their own economy domestically. All those factory laborers in China don't make enough to buy what they make anyway. The situation of the mass of factory laborers in China is pre Henry Ford in USA and his $5 a day.
Chinese people save and save and save. This is well known. Chinese know they need emergency money for medical expenses. Also to buy an apartment if they can. Everybody has got to have his car, from Japan number one and USA equally. If you own a Chinese made claptrap car you're poor, even if it's new...nobody rides with you ha. Your prosperity is judged by your car, which is nothing new as we know well and for a long time in USA and in other advanced economies. (Sports cars are judged by the Party to be too petty bourgeois so the tax is equal to the sticker price.)
Saving for the longer term is a Chinese iron rule due to the vicissitudes the Chinese know they've suffered over thousands of years. That is, ruler after ruler has failed 'em. Chinese people know they need to look out for themselves. Chinese people know their rulers are out for themselves and that the only thing the rulers do is to buy time because time is money for 'em. More of it in fact.
The rulers number one is power, money, corruption. It is they who live for each day only to see how much they can steal and swindle from the people. And the people know this, which is central to why they save. The rulers in contrast live for today and for tomorrow when they know they'll have to cut and run. It's the Chinese people who take and have the long view. Their long view is that their leaders always fail them. And that they themselves have to be ready for the day it occurs.
That's the only "long game" in China. It's by the Chinese people themselves who know that every emperor fails 'em sooner or later and that they themselves have to be prepared and ready to look out for themselves and their own survival. China is actually and in fact a rather gruff dog eat dog jungle despite some 21st century prosperity for some of the people.
Those who are middle class prosperous never see the money, which is familiar to many of the middle classes of the world. That is, on payday the money comes in and it goes out same day, while nobody who gets paid ever sees it. Almost everyone who's middle class relates to this eh. After I explain that to Chinese they feel better but not any more secure or comfortable than they did before they got the word on it. Chinese wouldn't know this about the world outside of China if we didn't advise 'em. China's limited opening is in economics and business, not in finance and capital, not in information or data, not in knowledge and not of the world beyond its closed borders.
