The Chinese growth model has well-documented flaws and is unsustainable in its present form. Martin Wolf, the Financial Times economics commentator, summed up in late 2009 the deep distortions of a system that has suppressed personal consumption in favour of investment and exports with a devastatingly simple calculation. ‘In 2007, personal consumption was just 35 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, China was investing 11 per cent of GDP in low-yielding foreign assets, via its current account surplus,’ he wrote. ‘Remember how poor hundreds of millions of Chinese still are. Then consider that the net
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