The notion of
the middle income trap applies, I think. It's even present in political vision - the "modestly well off society" - and apparently it's a good thing to not be creating pathways to greater wealth.
"Avoiding the Middle Income Trap entails identifying strategies to introduce new processes and find new markets to maintain export growth."This "identifying" and "finding" is a creative task, and as such is destabilising. I susect new markets to exploit are welcome in the short term. Longer term discovery and actions taken to sustain new markets are far less welcome. It seems to me, and I'm just projecting here, that there is a striking difference in short and long term goals, and in particular there is a striking difference in who keeps and protects the goals. The people are allowed short term goals, such as "get rich soon". But there is some other collection of goals present in the construction of institutional China, political goals, and they are different.
" Ramping up domestic demand is also important—an expanding middle class can use its increasing purchasing power to buy high-quality, innovative products and help drive growth"And this, in China, is ultimately a joke. I don't think "high quality, innovative products" are welcome. If they can be used as black boxes without much understanding, then yes. Otherwise, no. Adequate concepts of "quality" and "innovation" carry with them a freight of bad thoughts that imperil the nation.
I think it is intended that the country develop along a certain path. (Which, as a thought, is kind of "well, duh!" - but it's still kind of shocking to realize the traditional virtues of, say, democracies, are not meant to come into play here.)