Introduction

Shane Leary joins Miles Yu to discuss the Chines Communist Party's "Buy New Products" campaign, an attempt to subsidize consumer spending in the face of a sluggish economy. They then turn to controversy surrounding the Beijing half marathon, in which African competitors allowed Chinese national record holder He Jei to prevail in the last moments, and its implications for the broader trend of fraud in Chinese society. Finally, they discuss credit rating company Fitch's decision to downgrade China's credit from stable to negative, and its economic implications.