The world economy is unlikely to see the same heated growth in trade that fuelled globalisation before the 2008 financial crisis, largely because China’s manufacturers are turning inward, according to research by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The study seeks to answer what has been one of the most perplexing questions facing economists in recent years: does a continuing slowdown in the growth of international commerce mean globalisation has peaked?

For the past two years world trade has expanded more slowly than the global economy, the first instance in decades of that happening. The shift has seen the apparent end of what some economists have called an era of “hyperglobalisation”, during which international trade reliably grew at double the pace of the global economy.