China’s economic shocks have thrown the world off balance

IN THE later years of the epic US growth stretch that ended with Covid, a phrase began to catch on to describe the buoyant conditions spreading across the globe. The world was said to be on the cusp of an unusually synchronised expansion.

Few people still spoke of a jobless recovery in America, and China, after some rare stumbles, appeared to be returning to its old robust self. Inflation was off the floor, seen as a good thing.

Japan and the euro region looked good, the latter having put a crippling debt crisis behind it. The beauty of this surprising togetherness, hailed in early 2017 by articles from Bloomberg News and a story on the cover of The Economist, was that it would lighten the burden carried by the US.