Just over a decade ago I wrote a book about the rise and fall of 20th century Japanese finance. I later discovered that a pirated Chinese language copy had been produced.
Chinese regulators and bankers came to see me about the book and explained. “We want to understand what happened so we can be different,” the mantra went; Japan’s crazy 1980s bubble was being studied to show what policymakers should not do.
It is a point Beijing needs to relearn now, in relation not so much to Japan’s bubble, but to the aftermath. If you want to see what can happen when a government tries to prop up stock and land prices, Tokyo’s story is sobering. It shows that not only do interventions carry a financial cost (since they rarely work for long), but that they can be a lasting drag on investor psychology.