When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared "Japan is back" and urged the world to "buy my Abenomics," foreigners tripped over themselves to bet on his bold revival plan. None more so than China's President Xi Jinping.
No, Xi's government didn't indulge in the great capital race back to Japan, as did a who's-who of hedge fund managers. But he's enthusiastically embraced a key element of Abe's program: its underlying strategy. Like Abe, Xi promised nothing short of shock therapy, and is delivering hollow rhetoric instead. Just as Abe's talk of epochal structural change now inspires eye-rolling, Xi faces a crisis of confidence as markets get wise to his all-stimulus-no-change government.
Xi's not alone. The all-talk ethos sinking Abenomics can be found in Narendra Modi's much-hyped resurgence plan. The latest budget from India's "reformer-in-chief," his third, makes for dismal reading. Once again, Modi served up cautious tinkering, not the big bang voters wanted. Ditto for South Korea's President Park Geun-hye, another self-described Asian disrupter. Parkonomics, too, has been big on rhetoric, small on tangible change.
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