China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, contains multitudes. His economic philosophy touts both self-reliance and openness. His vision of policymaking embraces top-down design, but also bottom-up experimentation. During the covid-19 pandemic, he urged local officials to eliminate infections (which often required lockdowns) and promote growth (which required mobility). His recent call to cultivate “new productive forces” entails championing cutting-edge technologies, but without neglecting traditional industries. Communists are taught to believe in the power of contradictory forces, as Trivium, a consultancy, once put it. So Mr Xi “will expect his comrades to cope”.

For others, Mr Xi’s priorities can be baffling. Take the “two unshakeables”, one of his favourite slogans, which has been heard a lot in the past year or so. This refers to the Communist Party’s unshakeable commitment to both the state-owned economy and private enterprise. The pledge, sometimes translated as the “two unswervings” or the “two unwaverings”, first appeared under Mr Xi’s predecessors. It was reaffirmed in 2013 when his party promised to “unwaveringly encourage, support and guide the development of the non-public sector”. And it will no doubt feature at the forthcoming “third plenum”, a twice-a-decade meeting devoted to long-term reforms, which will take place from July 15th-18th.

But what does the formula mean? At first blush, each unshakeable seems to be in contradiction with the other. Almost 867,000 firms in China have some degree of state ownership, according to Franklin Allen of Imperial College London and co-authors. Real resources, unlike party slogans, are scarce. Any land, labour or capital used by China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) ceases to be available to scrappier private firms. A commitment to one form of ownership must surely come at the expense of the other.