China may be garlanding bankers as “model workers” but, as models know, fashion can be fickle. This year’s explosion of fresh credit has many fretting over an eventual rise in bad debts. And with good reason: at 31 per cent of gross domestic product, the Rmb8,185bn of loans pumped out between January and August is more than was seen in Japan in the late 1980s, or in the US during Alan Greenspan’s bubble.

China’s riposte is that its banks are healthy. In aggregate, they are: published monthly data show non-performing loans falling metronomically for the past five years, to 1.8 per cent at the end of June. But lean in more closely and the pulse flickers. Sharply rising NPLs could erode already thin capital bases, especially outside the big four lenders. As Citigroup notes, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Minsheng, numbers seven and eight by assets, barely meet the local minimum legal requirement of an 8 per cent capital adequacy, let alone the regulator’s guidance of 10 per cent.