When China's cabinet announced a Rmb4tn economic stimulus at the height of the global financial crisis in November 2008, the plan was widely praised as a vital contribution to supporting the world economy.

Seven years later, the legacy of that programme is decidedly mixed. The burst of spending on infrastructure and new manufacturing capacity propelled the economy to 9.8 per cent average annual GDP growth in 2009-2011 and also buoyed the economies of resource exporters such as Australia and Brazil by boosting demand for industrial commodities.

But the stimulus also led to a vast increase in debt. McKinsey, the business consultancy, estimates that total debt — including the household, corporate, financial and government sectors — quadrupled from $7.4tn at the end of 2007 to $28.2tn by mid-2014. As a share of GDP, Chinese debt rose from 158 per cent to 282 per cent in the same period.