Multinationals such as Procter & Gamble tend to take one look at China and see 1.3bn heads in need of?shampoo.?Wannabe?multinationals actually inside China are apt to take a more rounded view. Take Sany Heavy Industry, the country’s biggest maker of construction machinery, which is busily expanding almost everywhere but China.

That is not merely a reflection of its desire to create a global brand to rival Komatsu of Japan or Caterpillar of the US. Building plants in the US, Brazil, India and Germany, as it has done this year to push overseas sales, represents a sensible hedge. With 96 per cent of sales generated within China in the first six months, and 97 per cent of gross profit, the Rmb93bn ($15bn) Shanghai-listed group is exposed to the risk of a serious domestic slowdown in construction.

That prospect seems remote. Four-fifths of Sany’s sales are from concrete pumps, excavators and truck-mounted cranes, which should be buoyed by any form of investment in China’s capital stock. Still, real estate development, which accounts for a quarter of the country’s total fixed-asset investment, is undeniably weak: property prices are now falling in about half of China’s biggest cities. And as Credit Suisse notes, China’s fleet of earthmoving vehicles is already bigger than either the US or Japan on a per-unit of gross capital formation basis – even if the calculation assumes a much shorter asset life in China, to account for higher usage intensity.