Jobs growth in the US is back. Over the past three months, official statistics show that the US has added more jobs than in any such period since September-November 1997, at the height of the Clinton boom. The freefall in oil prices is over. The European Central Bank has acceded to market wishes and resorted to “QE” bond purchases. The strong dollar has wrought less damage on US corporate profits than feared. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer, in a word, is “China”. The world’s second-largest economy contributes more towards world growth than any other, and has many tools — due to its enormous foreign exchange reserves — with which to avert a crisis. But the litany of economic indicators flashing reasons for concern is growing longer.

Economic growth numbers themselves are notoriously prone to revision. Diana Choyleva of London’s Lombard Street Research, a long-term sceptic on China, estimates that Chinese real growth in domestic product dropped to 5 per cent last year, once the impact of “missing” output “almost equal to the size of Malaysia’s economy” added to the data at the end of last year is stripped out. This would represent a startling slowdown from the trend of the past two decades.