"Paper tiger" is a literal English translation of the Chinese phrase zhilaohu. The term refers to something or someone that claims or appears to be powerful or threatening, but is actually ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge.

The reason it's kind of hard to know anything about the Chinese Economy is again Paper Tiger, they'll only publish things that make them look good and hide the true figures. That power outage is a good example of how weak their true strength is, even though Aus coal accounted for 1% of total coal used in their local electricity generation.

Example 1 Example 2 They'll use state sponsored media or just outright pay "journalists" to fabricate stories about how great they are.

But there are a few guesses you can make from articles that have come out.

Abandoning GDP goals in the midst of Corona.

China's Debt growing to 330%, almost rivaling Japan in total debt.

China's Inflation over the past 2 years has dropped to almost 0, meaning their economy is slowing but that can be argued that's in line with other Western countries.

China's Economic growth has gone from 10% of GDP in 2010, to 6% of GDP in 2019, forecast of 5% in 2020.

That summery is actually really good so I'll post it here.

Massive government spending has stoked China’s unprecedented growth over the last 30 years. Government control over major companies and the yuan’s exchange rate have generated large improvements in the Chinese economy. Its regulations on foreign businesses have helped as well. But China’s present debt-to GDP ratio is one of the highest in the world. Its domestic consumer demand is low. So, the nation relies heavily on exports. These factors are now considerably slowing growth. China’s government is facing the necessity of instituting delicate economic reforms. Such reforms include encouraging investments in China’s stock market, aggressively promoting the Made in China 2025 program, and developing innovative companies, among others. They want to prevent the possibility of another people’s revolution should a pervasive economic downshift occur.

Also

So as world demand contracts the Chinese economy feels the effects not only of lower demand, but increasing wages, costs, and welfare payments. At the same time apparent falls in Chinese production leads to lack of market optimism in the West.

Trying to find an answer on Quora that isn't a shill is hard.

So the things I would take away from this is.

1. The IMF seems to let everyone and anyone print money and accumulate as much debt as they want with no responsibilities of paying it back.

2.China's Economy is slowing down and while there are powerful corps like Tencent and the like in country, the actual demand for consumer goods is slowing and that means core inflation is going to rise again and with 330% debt that means more money to print and devaluing the Yuan even further.

3. The banks, state utilities and most businesses are owned or at least have some attachment to the core central CCP. If/when the economy crashes, it'll take everyone with them. Where as if another crash happened in America, they're more protected because everything is spread out.

So yeah, Paper Tiger. They produce inferior crap on the cheap but they're burning good will with stuff that happened during the pandemic, it'd make business sense to stop relying on Chinese goods but we live in clown world, so things will continue like usual and they'll still act like a dick because they can.

A decent economic article on how to starve off Chinese interest.