China saved the world in 2008. After the crash of Lehman Brothers and the seizure of the world financial system, it was China’s emphatic stimulus of 4tn renminbi (or about $570bn) that started a turnround in asset prices and then the economy.

This seemed to vindicate the “decoupling” theory – that emerging markets had developed the ability to grow independently, even if the developed world was in recession.

But the world (or at least Europe) needs saving once more. And it does not look like China can do it again. After its last credit binge, it no longer has the firepower to launch another stimulus on any such scale. The evidence mounts that the Chinese economy, which at the margin was responsible for substantially all of the world’s growth in the years of the credit crisis, is slowing. On a 12-month rolling basis, its imports are falling slightly; factory output data are poor. And world markets are as tightly coupled as ever.