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, according to the Ministry of Commerce. 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.

Still, Lotte needs this. It has less than a dozen stores on the mainland, posting a small net loss in the first half. Given the Chinese practice of buying inventories from wholesalers, the equation is simple: the more outlets, the better the bargaining power. And Mr Fang has played Chinese retail wisely. He has focused on hypermarkets – the fastest growing retail format – in second-tier cities, most of them in prosperous Jiangsu province, where per capita income growth is three or four percentage points better than the national average. Earnings-per-share growth since 2004 is more than a third better than Lotte's. Besides, Times was listed at 35 times forward earnings two years ago. Investors shouldn't flinch at the price tag.