Last week, Karen Maley presciently warned that China is running out of time to avoid “Japanification” – decades of slow growth due to high debt and declining productivity. Yet there is good evidence to support an even more pessimistic assessment and suggest it would be a good outcome if only China were more like Japan.

China’s GDP surpassed Japan about a decade ago. But a crude measurement of economic activity occurring each year is not the best indicator of material success. Unlike Japan, China will not grow rich on a per capita basis before its irreversible ageing demographics comes into play.