During the recent Central Economic Work Conference held in Beijing—which is an annual meeting to set economic policies, especially for China’s finance and banking sectors—Chinese leader Xi Jinping emphasized the concept of “demand-side management, break through bottlenecks.” Demand-side policies usually refer to increasing consumption and establishing a stronger domestic market. The so-called “bottlenecks” are the massive burdens that currently impact people’s livelihood, which are expensive housing, education, and medical costs. They are like three mountains weighing on the people. Without resolving these three issues, demand-side reforms are only good on paper. The Baidu (Chinese version of Wikipedia) entry for the phrase “three new mountains” explains it thusly: “Nowadays, ‘reforms’ in housing, medical care, and education have resulted in high-rises, hospitals, and schools being built everywhere. But people cannot afford to live in them, get treated there, or get an education there!” The “three mountains” have exhausted the general public’s capacity …