Bridgewater Associates did not become the world’s largest hedge fund by getting many big bets wrong. But the firm’s founder, Ray Dalio, is mistaken in arguing that now is the time to buy into China. Far from it. For two sets of reasons — one external, one made at home — Beijing is facing the sternest test yet of its economic development model.

In a video posted online last week, Mr Dalio urged investors to look past the latest flare-up in trade tensions with the US and seize the long-term opportunities offered by a rising global power that is finally opening up its financial markets.

But this is not any old tariff row that will eventually blow over. Rather, it signals the end of an era in which China benefited from ever-closer integration into the global economy. The rules of that engagement are now being rewritten, in technology as much as in trade, and will hamper China’s hitherto rapid rise up the value-added ladder.