In Liar’s Poker, traders blamed “the Arabs” for any mysterious market swings. These days, the catch-all explanation is China. Shares up? Some State-Owned Enterprise must be mulling a bid.

Anyone piling into a stock on Chinese rumours should remember, though: an approach may not materialise, and if it does, success is far from guaranteed . Dealogic analysis shows China’s failure rate – the proportion of announced cross-border deals withdrawn, rejected or allowed to expire – was the world’s highest in 2009, at 12 per cent and fell only to 11 per cent last year. Blame Sinophobia or clumsy bid tactics, but until the failure rate gets closer to US or UK levels (2 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively, in 2010) talk of China shaping the world remains an exaggeration.