What Xi Jinping gets wrong about China’s economy

The EU is no stranger to overcapacity. Its economic landscape once featured butter mountains, milk lakes and other landmarks of excess production—the surreal results of its common agricultural policy, which guaranteed high prices to dairy farmers. Thus the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, knew what she was talking about when she warned Xi Jinping, China’s ruler, about his country’s “structural overcapacities” at a recent meeting in Paris.