Once again, Western ‘experts’ are predicting a financial crash in China. “China is flailing”, says one commentator; another says “a debt bomb is about to explode”. These would-be Cassandras reckon China’s demise will be driven by the bursting of the property bubble, excessive debt and the grinding down of the economy due to the government’s “terrible” ‘zero-COVID’ policy that keeps parts of the country in permanent lockdowns. And then of course, there are the growing restrictions on China’s exports and its investments abroad, imposed by the US and supposedly backed by its allies in Asia.