Another policy lever at China’s disposal: the mandatory shopping season. During October’s Golden Week holiday – dreamed up a decade ago to boost consumption – retail sales were almost a fifth higher than this year’s average weekly take, the Ministry of Commerce says. Not that the Chinese consumer needed much encouragement. Year-on-year growth in nominal retail sales volumes seems to have troughed at 11.6 per cent in February. Most recent official data in August showed a 15.4 per cent rise, not far off the average 16 per cent rate of the past five years.

Such vertiginous growth explains why Lotte Shopping, South Korea’s leading department store retailer, is digging deep for Times Ltd, a Hong Kong-listed operator of 55 discount stores and 13 supermarkets, in the biggest Korean acquisition in China. Squeezing out minorities at the same price reported to have been agreed with Times chairman and majority shareholder Kenneth Fang – HK$5.50 a share, more than double this year’s average price – would cost it HK$4.8bn, or about 26 times forecast earnings. That’s about par for the course for the motley collection of Chinese retail stocks in Hong Kong, but a big premium on FTSE Asian retailers, on 18 times.