In the 1980s the west watched the Japanese “miracle” with wonder and tried to figure out how to copy its success. Britain still believed in the Japanese model in 1990 when Shirayama Shokusan bid for London’s County Hall, to create a luxury hotel over the river from the Houses of Parliament. The Chinese economic model has supplanted Japan (and the US of the 2000s) as the latest favourite – even as growth slows and problems build. Now China’s Wanda plans its own luxury hotel and apartment complex on the Thames.
The parallels between China now and Japan’s credit-driven boom of the 1980s are scary. Credit rating agency Fitch thinks Chinese credit has expanded far faster relative to economic growth in the past four years than during the heyday of Japanese lending at the end of the 1980s, or in South Korea in the four years leading up to its 1998 crisis.
The broadest measure of lending, total social financing, is up 52 per cent this year, while pure credit is growing at twice the pace of the economy.