yes. the covid lockdowns were just a tip of the iceberg, which was of course also happened to be on fire, and everything around it is on fire too.
the service-goods shift during COVID and the shiftback after, coupled with the energy and food price shocks due to Russia-Ukraine war, definitely did not help the Chinese economy, that was already faking a higher GDP growth to paper over the cracks.
geopolitical tea leaves reading experts point to the aging population of China as a massive problem (again coupled with a lot of factors that make it a worse problem than it would be with a relatively open society, etc.), the limits to efficiency gains from centralization and big infrastructure projects (only so many miles of high-speed rail have positive ROI, only so many big dams make sense, etc), and - again - the cost of maintaining the authoritarian state.
The OP speaks of tea leaf reader, which makes this a secondhand reading of tea leaves. Reading tea leaves is essentially writing fiction - is this not how the comment was meant to be read?
the service-goods shift during COVID and the shiftback after, coupled with the energy and food price shocks due to Russia-Ukraine war, definitely did not help the Chinese economy, that was already faking a higher GDP growth to paper over the cracks.
geopolitical tea leaves reading experts point to the aging population of China as a massive problem (again coupled with a lot of factors that make it a worse problem than it would be with a relatively open society, etc.), the limits to efficiency gains from centralization and big infrastructure projects (only so many miles of high-speed rail have positive ROI, only so many big dams make sense, etc), and - again - the cost of maintaining the authoritarian state.