Little fuss has been made over the first US dollar bond from Baosteel, China’s biggest listed steelmaker, sold this month. One of the best steel company credits in the world, Baosteel still paid close to 4 per cent to borrow $500m with its Hong Kong issue. But the bond will be priced off US Treasuries, not China’s local interest rates – and that may be worth its weight in gold to Baosteel, even in a time of Federal Reserve tapering. Even good Chinese companies face a tougher interest-rate environment and higher capital costs in 2014. This is worth fussing over.

Few would have expected 2013 to be a year in which China’s central bank raised interest rates by 75 bps, despite one of the biggest slowdowns in the country’s economic growth for some time (to a mere 7.5 per cent). The People’s Bank of China was more concerned with irrepressible growth in broad money, which is likely to rise 15 per cent this year, above the PBOC’s target.

Of course, the reddest flag might seem to be waving in short-term credit markets. Shanghai’s stock market shed 5 per cent this week, and fell nine days in a row for the first time since 1994, after the seven-day repo rate (the best measure of short-term interbank liquidity) spiked past 7 per cent. The PBOC is tightening here, too, much as it did in June. But both episodes were salved with central bank liquidity, once a lesson was taught to banks to lend carefully.