Thrift as a virtue is embedded deep within China’s culture. The written ideograms for words such as “save” and “store” sparkle with the feel-good symbols for grain, fields, silk and children. By contrast, the character for debt shows a man standing – forlornly one imagines – next to a pile of cowrie shells, an ancient form of IOU. Children are taught that “diligence is a cash cow and thrift is a gold mine”, while adults are warned in one somewhat humorous proverb that “going to bed early to save candles is not economical if the result is twins”.
Money, or the lack of it, was also a main motive behind the Communist party’s decision to open the economy to foreign investors more than three decades ago. So acute was the cash crunch then that when in 1974 Deng Xiaoping – the subsequent architect of capitalist reforms – prepared to lead a delegation to the UN, he found that only $38,000 in foreign currency remained in state coffers to pay for his trip.
So why, given such potent reminders of the importance of money management, has China’s government in the past five years swerved so much off the financial straight and narrow? Total debts owed by the government, companies and households have ballooned to 240 per cent of gross domestic product, virtually double the level at the time of the global financial crisis.