What is the secret of China’s success? While the US, Europe and Japan have been struggling, China’s economy has doubled in size in real terms every seven to eight years for the past three decades.

Part of the answer is simply that if a poor country gets its act together, it has the potential to grow much faster than a rich one. China was wretchedly poor in 1980 – poorer than Afghanistan or Chad, with half the per capita income of Niger or Ghana. It is far from wealthy today, with per capita income of about $10 a day. (No westerner would envy the income of a rural Chinese peasant.) And so the potential to catch up remains large, with China’s economic clout a matter of population rather than wealth.

And yet it is impossible to dismiss China’s economic achievement so easily. So what is the recipe for growth? If I was forced to sum it up in one phrase, I’d say “trial and error”.