What does the recent Chinese rebuke of individual wealth mean for the world economy?

Not an investor or an economist, but I have worked as a legal researcher for attorneys supporting business clients with interests in China and elsewhere in Asia.

For whatever it’s worth, my personal opinion is that it’s too soon to tell what this really means. Chinese leadership is known for making statements that sound like pure economic policy, but later develop as brute-force strategies to attack individuals or groups inside the country they view as political rivals. That’s how they used their “anti corruption” initiative to remove popular mayors & provincial governors seen as too independent of Beijing, and that’s what’s behind the move to curb tech compainies multinational growth.

It’s also worth noting that this egalitarian sounding declaration on “excessive” private wealth comes at the same time the FBI has warned that Chinese theft of US scientific and engineering intellectual property amounts to ”...one of the largest transfers of wealth in history.” :
https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-china-threat

Xi Jinping and the rest of the CPC leadership are increasingly acting as oppressive, dictatorial overlords who will manipulate and threaten private entrepenuers in China to harden their grip on power. Internationally they will twist trade agreements, bribe research experts, and steal from business partners to gain market control and technical dominance. No one should trust that they will follow ethical business practices or rule of law. Foreign investors who don’t act to protect themselves will not only lose money, but invaluable trade secrets.

So I guess I’m more than skeptical that this latest declaration from Xi and his ministers really has anything to do with a fair redistribution of wealth for the benefit of Chinese society. I think instead it’s more likely a calculated attack aimed at bringing private business under party domination. Only time will tell.

I don’t think it means anything to the global economy. China, like the US, is a country with a huge and increasing wealth gap. While the country’s average income is $5,030 per year Beijing has more billionaires than any other city in the world. As the Chinese economy expanded people generally have become much better off but some disillusionment has set in as the rich become ever richer leaving others behind. People on social media have been critical of ostentatious displays of wealth in recent months and Xi Jinping has reacted to this by speaking of “regulating excessively high incomes”.

The Chinese leadership has at times used accusations of “corruption” for political reasons but I don’t think this fall into that category.

It really is not about the wealth.
It is about power.
Pooh Bear has no problem with chinese industrialists ammassing wealth, or wealth inequality. Otherwise you would not have the problem of FoxConn workers throwing themselves off factory roofs due to low wages and horrible working conditions, and the response to that being just installing nets to prevent them from jumping.
The problem Pooh Bear has is that, along with the money, they also gain political clout, and once that runs counter to the official party line, the hammer comes down. You have seen what happened to Jack Ma.
All it is, is another tool to destroy political troublemakers.

There is a similar problem in the US with the super-rich becoming ever more wealthy while what was the middle class together with the poor trail hopelessly behind in their wake.

The difference is that the Chinese leadership recognise the problem and say they want to correct it. I think they should get some credit for that. Working conditions at Foxconn were bad because the bosses had too much wealth and power and the workers none and you can’t now criticise Xi for wanting to do something about it.

I think we should wait and see what Xi actually does before being too critical.

They also just made all crypto transactions illegal, they limited the time that children are allowed to play video games to I think 3 hours a weak, they put into motion a plan to purge all “effeminate” men from media, and they are actively prosecuting any media personality that made or makes utterances criticising chinese policy, using spurious legal excuses.
You simply can not look at the context all this creates, and conclude that their actions agains “wealth” have an innocuous rationale behind it.

I haven’t come to a conclusion yet. Let’s see how it plays out in practise. Meanwhile in the US similar disparities in wealth and power are excused on ideological grounds and nothing is ever done.