A slowdown in China is forcing multinational companies to treat the world’s second-biggest economy more like a developed market, turning away from a headlong dash for growth to focus on premium businesses, or improving productivity by investing in staff. As the main driver of global growth for much of the past decade, China has been a godsend to big international firms looking to boost profits as economies elsewhere struggled. Now, though, Beijing is attempting to rebalance its economy to a more sustainable rate of expansion dubbed the “new normal” by President Xi Jinping, and with growth at its slowest in a generation, the current quarter has seen a slew of companies citing China as a reason for underwhelming earnings. “We’ve entered the new phase, a new normal with […]