In 2023, the US economy outperformed expectations. A widely predicted recession never happened. Many economists argued that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment; instead, we’ve experienced immaculate disinflation, rapidly falling inflation at no visible cost.

But the story has been very different in the world’s No. 2 economy. Some analysts expected the Chinese economy to boom after it lifted the Draconian zero-COVID-19 measures it had adopted to contain the pandemic. Instead, China has underperformed by just about every economic indicator other than official gross domestic product, which reportedly expanded 5.2 per cent.