Is China’s social contract under pressure?
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
China's ruling Communist party is meeting to discuss the country's economic plans, at a time of international uncertainty. The party has a grand bargain with its citizens — people will accept one party rule and restrictions on freedoms in exchange for a better life, but, is that bargain no longer so secure?
Also in the programme: an international force has seized illegal drugs worth an estimated billion dollars in the Arabian Sea, is the Gulf region becoming a major market? And the EU’s top human right prize goes to two imprisoned journalists.
(Image: Delegates in the Great Hall of the People. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.8 | Hello and welcome to News Air from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:14.9 | I'm James Menendez. President Trump is expected to head to Asia at the end of this week, a trip during which he may meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. |
| 0:23.9 | The stability of the global economy is likely to be at the top of the agenda, |
| 0:27.5 | but the president striking an upbeat tone saying he thinks he'll do a, quote, fantastic trade deal with China. |
| 0:35.0 | Beijing certainly has good reason to hope for an end to their trade dispute. |
| 0:39.2 | It's put a lot of pressure on a Chinese economy that was already under strain after more than |
| 0:44.9 | 30 years of breakneck growth that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. The slowdowns |
| 0:50.6 | led to falling house prices, job insecurity and large numbers of young people |
| 0:55.3 | simply without a job. The Chinese Communist Party has a grand bargain with its citizens, |
| 1:01.2 | an unwritten social contract, if you like. People would accept one party rule and restrictions |
| 1:06.7 | on freedoms in exchange for a better life. But what happens when that better life is no longer guaranteed? |
| 1:14.2 | Our China correspondent Laura Bicker has been finding out. |
| 1:18.9 | So the stairs up, completely flooded. |
| 1:22.6 | Watch the wire. |
| 1:25.5 | Pong Jo is leading me through the flooded parking garage of his unfinished home. |
| 1:30.7 | This construction worker was once living the dream, sold to him by his leaders. |
| 1:35.5 | He saved a bit of money, bought a new apartment. |
| 1:39.8 | This is your apartment. |
| 1:50.3 | Okay. You don't have a window here or a door onto your balcony. |
| 1:59.0 | Oh, wow. As you can probably hear, five years on, it's still an empty concrete shell. |
| 2:05.0 | We feel hopeless. |
... |
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