A lively debate in recent years has been might China "become Japan," falling into a chronic malaise from which it can't extricate itself. It's a specter that's morphed from "if" to "when" — with when being the past 12 months.
President Xi Jinping's men thought they'd escaped 2015's woes, only to see the floor fall out from under them in the first 10 days of this year. The root causes of instability that's panicking global markets can be traced back to Jan. 1, 2015, when Xi opted for a muddle-through policy akin to Tokyo's in the late 1990s. The question now is if China can be more successful than Japan in digging itself out?
Tokyo's 1997-1998 policy decisions, arguably when the Japan of popular imagination — an unbeatable force destined to eat the West's lunch — became a mere shadow of itself, offer clues for Asia's biggest economy. In my 2014 book " Japanization " I traced the point of no return to November 1997 and the collapse of Yamaichi Securities.