If Hu Jintao was a growth junkie, Xi Jinping wants to put China’s economy on a methadone programme. Under Mr Hu, the former president, Beijing was addicted to economic expansion. China defied the collapse in external demand that followed the 2008 Lehman Brothers crisis by ramping up spending on roads, ports and smelters through a huge expansion of credit funnelled into the economy via compliant banks and local governments desperate to meet centralised growth targets. The economy grew at near double digits even as exports slowed dramatically and the current account surplus shrank from 10 per cent of output to just 2-3 per cent.

As with heroin, though, the ecstatic highs had side-effects. The economy became ever more dependent on quick fixes. It took more and more inputs – in the form of easy credit and cheap raw materials – to produce each unit of gross domestic product. Debt, some of it unrepayable, rose sharply. Capacity ballooned beyond demand.

Mr Xi, who took over the presidency in March last year, has served notice that enough is enough. From now on, China will not pursue expansion at all costs. The quality of growth will be emphasised. There have been several indications of a change of heart. Short-term interest rates have been allowed to rise almost 3 percentage points and credit growth has been slowed from a hair-raising peak of 23 per cent to a (still hardly abstemious) 18 per cent. The cost of material inputs, from electricity to water and land, will be subject to market forces.