This week, the world’s biggest container ship begins its maiden voyage from Asia to the US, after picking up cargo in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. But the appearance of the CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin — 20 stories high and longer than the Empire State Building is tall — highlights one of the failings of a region heavily reliant on trade. While shipping companies have long been seeking ways to improve their margins, such as using bigger vessels, too many Asian companies have instead ignored margins to focus on sales growth — which is now slowing sharply.

According to this week’s purchasing managers’ indices, manufacturing in developed-world economies remains at a level that just about implies expansion. But production in Asia excluding Japan has been contracting for the best part of the year. Last month, it slowed further. Indices measuring new orders fell for China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan — in other words, all of Asia’s biggest exporters of manufactured goods to developed markets.

This matters to investors who believe Asian stocks look cheap and should revert to mean at some point. On ratios of price to earnings or book value, equities in Asia excluding Japan are valued well below their long-run averages — and developed world stocks are not. But, like other emerging markets, Asian indices are often heavily weighted to hard-hit sectors, such as financials. Strip those out, and emerging markets price-to-earnings forecasts are similar to those in the developed world, say analysts at CLSA.