China is set for a serious economic fall

 The future trajectory of the Chinese economy is a subject for doctoral theses rather than casual column items. But the advent of the Year of the Dragon, at last weekend’s Lunar New Year, was greeted with such pessimistic commentaries that the natural contrarian should ask whether the consensualists are getting it wrong: maybe the dragon is merely marking a pause before martialling its mighty resources for the next transglobal burst of fire?

The negative narrative goes like this. In spite of deflation in consumer prices, Chinese shoppers are frightened of spending. Despite central bank interventions aimed at boosting asset prices, the property market is crashing after the collapse of the developer Evergrande and the Shanghai stock market has been falling since last April. Youth unemployment is high; there’s ‘chaos in the pork market’; and annual GDP growth has halved (or worse) from the 9 per cent level of earlier years. While some reports had Beijing hoping forlornly for an upward blip as a result of reunion celebrations over the new year period, others foresaw the end of ‘the Chinese economic miracle’.