While investors are understandably mesmerised by the US fiscal train wreck, they should shoot a glance at another deficit, over in China. On Sunday the customs bureau reported that imports ($400bn) had exceeded exports ($399bn) over the first three months. This tiny trade deficit – China’s first quarterly shortfall for seven years – is an encouraging development for the world economy.

Granted, it is a function of the commodities boom: at constant prices for oil and iron ore, for example, the $1bn deficit would have become a surplus of $18bn. But if the result is that China is consuming about as much as it is producing, good. Having fewer excess dollars swilling around the system means that China faces less pressure to print yuan to keep the exchange rate where it wants it. That also means the People’s Bank accumulates foreign assets at a slower rate, weakening one of the key links in what research boutique GaveKal calls “the circle of manipulation”, where Asian central banks keep bond yields low, and liquidity rampant, by bidding up developed world assets.

If China, with $2,850bn of FX reserves – more than the next eight Asian nations put together – were to start to relax controls, neighbours would surely follow.