China's investment binge has been the envy of many other countries, not least India where inadequate roads mean that 40 percent of crops are spoiled on the way to market, and Japan, where 30-year-old tunnels are passing their sell-by dates and maintenance is not keeping up with demand.
In city after city in China, skyscrapers glitter and shopping malls groan with luxury goods. Massive highways and high-speed rail lines make travel easier, at least until you reach the city traffic jams.
In an area of Anhui province officially designated an "impoverished county," the government office block looks exactly like the White House, only newer and whiter. In some places there has been overindulgence: Ordos in Inner Mongolia has state-of-the-art skyscrapers for a million people, but has only 30,000 inhabitants, so it has been called the world's biggest ghost city.