With growth on track, China starts to unwind stimulus

THE PHRASE “first in, first out” has become shorthand for China’s experience of the covid-19 pandemic: it is both where the virus started spreading and the first large country to control it. Its early failure and subsequent success will be studied by epidemiologists for years to come. But for economists and investors, it is another “first in, first out” that matters more at the moment. China was the first country to open its lending and spending taps in the face of the coronavirus downturn. Now, it is the first to start to close them, giving others a partial preview of what the end of stimulus will look like.Parallels between countries are, of course, imperfect. China, for one, required less stimulus to begin with, because its workers went back to factories and offices nearly a full year ago. But a few general conclusions can still be drawn about its return to more normal monetary and fiscal policies. At the National People’s Congress, an annual rubber-stamp parliament that began on March 5th, China’s leaders laid out their basic roadmap.