Chinese statistics and Chinese milk packaging have something in common. Do not believe what you read on the label. Just as state-owned companies allowed suppliers to boost the supposed protein content of infant milk powder with melamine, an industrial plastic, so state-controlled statisticians have sometimes doctored official figures to suit the Communist party’s needs.

The goal has been smooth growth. Thus state figures have sometimes underestimated true expansion. Likewise, in the previous slowdown, when electricity generation stalled, economic activity mysteriously rumbled on unaffected. Thus when we learn that China will, over two years, pump Rmb4,000bn ($586bn, €466bn) into an economy growing at “only” 9 per cent a year – a veritable comedown from the 10-12 per cent an octane-fuelled populace has come to expect – we should sniff the contents suspiciously.