I still have a vivid memory of my first appearance at the China Development Forum. It was March 2001 and the CDF had been started a year earlier by then Premier Zhu Rongji as a platform of engagement and debate between the ministers of the Chinese government, academics (both foreign and domestic), and a scattering of business executives. It was great example of Zhu’s brilliance as a strategic thinker, deliberately exposing China’s senior leadership to tough feedback immediately after the completion of the National People’s Congress. If they couldn’t handle the give and take after the biggest policy meeting of the year, went the inside commentary, they didn’t deserve a seat on the State Council.
As Morgan Stanley’s Chief Economist with a strong interest in China, I was invited as a foreign academic. In 2001, I participated in a couple of panel sessions on the Chinese economy and then, as I detailed in a Project Syndicate column a couple of years ago, gave a keynote address on the global economic outlook over lunch on the second day. My warning of a global recession in the aftermath of the bursting of the dotcom bubble in early 2000 was met with spirited debate, both from the Chinese side and my fellow American attendees. At my first CDF, I was surprised, actually exhilarated, by the experience.
At the final session of CDF 2001, I found out why. The scene was a meeting between the foreign delegation and Premier Zhu Rongji in China’s Great Hall of the People. As per protocol, the chairman of that year’s CDF, Sir John Bond of HSBC, stood up and started to provide a recap of all the sessions over the past two and a half days. The Premier quickly cut him off and asked for a written copy of the summary. He was more interested in hearing the debate on the global outlook that had taken place during my keynote lunch address the previous day. He called on me to summarize my position and then asked the same of Fred Bergsten, founder of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, who had taken the other side of the debate.
At the end of the meeting, Premier Zhu made a point of coming up to me and saying in perfect English, “Roach, I hope you are wrong, but we will plan as if you are right.” A year later, Zhu Rongji personally thanked me for my advice, and that sealed my reputation as a “good friend of China.”
Over the ensuing years, the China Development Forum grew in size and stature. I continued to play a relatively prominent role for almost a decade, but I must concede my impact probably peaked in 2001. Toward the end of the 2000-oughts, the attendance list had broadened to include Nobel Prize winners, former high-level government officials, CEOs of countless multinational corporations who were hungry for business opportunities in China, and wide participation of the international media. CDF had been anointed at the Davos of China. I was still one of the core academic regulars, but my role was increasingly marginalized.
But I kept going, year after year — in large part out of loyalty to the origins of the CDF, which I had been privileged to witness, but also to stay in touch with many of my good friends in China whose candor and curiosity was nothing short of remarkable. And as a China watcher, it was invaluable for me to observe CDF discussions firsthand. In 2025, after 25 consecutive years of going to the CDF, I held the record at the longest attending foreign delegate.
That attendance streak has now come to an end. As I noted a few weeks ago, I was not invited back this year. The organizers (belatedly) sent a perfunctory note “…thanking me for my participation over the years” along with their wishes for “… a very healthy, happy and prosperous year of the Horse.”
Chinese Premier Li Quang addressing the China Development Forum, March 22, 2026
I was disappointed but hardly shocked by the outcome. A couple of years ago, I was informed that, while I could still attend the CDF, I would not be allowed to speak in any public sessions. My views on China (and especially Hong Kong) had turned more cautious and I was informed that “… your recent comments on the Chinese economy have generated intense scrutiny and even controversy among Chinese and international press. It is very likely that whatever you say at CDF in a public setting will be misinterpreted and even sensationalized by media, which is not in the best interest of you or us.” But I still went in 2024 and again last year in 2025. As I wrote at the time in a piece entitled, “What’s the Point?” the point of it all was to keep showing up and bear personal witness to the fate of the China Development Forum.
I was not able to do that this year. But my friends in China have given me a pretty good understanding of how it went. The CDF is now a day shorter — it had been cut from three days to two in 2024 — and Premier Li Qiang gave an opening speech for the third year in a row rather than host an interactive dialogue at the end. By my count from a pirated copy of the agenda, there were 13 seminars lasting an average of 90 minutes (half of them running on parallel tracks) that included a total of some 117 speakers, an additional 8 keynote speakers, and a special international address from Tim Cook of Apple. Allowing for opening remarks by session moderators and courtesy time adjustments for keynote speakers and the four Nobel laureates, it boils down to an average of around six minutes per speaker — compromising substance, leaving essentially no time for interaction, let alone debate.
This shotgun approach to time management hardly did any justice to the important overall theme of CDF 2026: “China in Its 15th Five-year Plan Period: Advancing High-Quality Development and Creating New Opportunities Together.” A new plan is always a great moment for the Chinese leadership to ponder and, yes, debate the strategic opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Sadly, in its present format the CDF is ill-equipped to serve that important function.
A fragmented agenda packed with sound-bite length contributions from a multitude of speakers — many of whom knew little about the topics they were assigned to opine on — is incapable of framing the strategic debate over a new five-year plan. My take, for what it’s worth — obviously, not too much in China these days — is that the 15th Five-Year Plan essentially doubles down on the just-completed 14th Five-Year Plan. It places the highest priority on the industrial deepening of new high-quality productive factors, especially advanced technology. In doing so, it leaves the Chinese economy heavily dependent on exports at a time when external demand is facing stiff headwinds due to extraordinary geopolitical tensions as well as protectionism aimed at China’s mercantilist growth model.
Meanwhile the new plan, at best, pays only lip service to the Chinese consumer, long the most obvious candidate to fill the void left by post-crisis weakness in the property market and over-investment in both the public and private sectors. Senior leaders talk the talk of consumer-led rebalancing but are unwilling to walk the walk. Fixated on durable goods trade-in campaigns for cars and appliances that simply borrow from demand that would have been fulfilled in any case, the plan does little to address the excesses of fear-driven precautionary saving that hobble long-term discretionary consumption. Had I been at the CDF this year, I would have made that same point for the umpteenth year in a row. Alas, that was not to be. Sour grapes? Possibly, but mainly disappointment in the government’s steadfast fixation on telling only “the good stories of China.”
Back in my early days in China, I had long discussions with Premier Zhu Rongji and his successor, Wen Jiabao, over the imperatives of consumer-led rebalancing. True to the original spirit of the CDF, we didn’t always agree. But we had enough respect for each other’s views to recognize the importance of constructive debate. Sadly, that was then — not today.