China will bounce back and continue to drive global growth for decades

But is this slowdown really so bad? The change in the pace of growth is as much by design as by accident. China’s policymakers made a deliberate decision a few years ago, to move the economy away from an investment-led, export-driven model towards one in which domestic consumption plays the dominant role. The country’s leaders want growth that is sustainable.

For a long time investors have focused on China’s manufacturing data as an indicator to how well or badly the economy is doing. Recent weakness in the manufacturing data has been interpreted as a big negative and has ignored the growth of service industries, especially in the private sector.

Real estate, finance, hospitality, retail, transport, construction and other services accounted for some 55pc of GDP in 2014, up from 47pc in 2006, according to data compiled by CLSA and Citic Securities.

As the economy continues to move to a more domestic focus, this share will continue to rise. This is not to say everything is rosy in China. In recent years, western leaders watched with wide-eyed wonder at their Chinese counterparts’ handling of the economy. They looked on in envy at Beijing’s ability to manage the economy at a time when the world seemed to be closing in.

That reputation has taken a major dent recently. They successfully deflated a bubble in the property market but that meant that China’s army of retail investors piled into the domestic stock markets. The authorities should not have tried to prop this over-leveraged and speculative bubble. They should have let it pop but chose to intervene and then did so in a messy, unclear and unsuccessful way.

While they were bungling the rescue of the stock market, the authorities made a mess of communicating a loosening in renminbi policy, which fuelled suspicions the country was seeking to devalue its way out of trouble. This is prompting wealthy locals to move their cash offshore and in response the government is making it harder for money to be moved overseas.

Local government and corporate debt are big problems, the state sector is bloated and inefficient, while the property market remains fragile. Whilst my trip provided comfort on the state of the economy, my views on the stock market remain unchanged. We have always been very cautious about investing in Chinese companies because so many are opaque and many have woeful corporate governance.

It’s obvious if you spend time in China to see that the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets operate like casinos. Trading activity is dominated by retail investors who buy on rumours and flee at the first sign of trouble. It’s much more sensible to expose yourself to China’s growth by investing in companies which aren’t based there but do business there.

Barely 15pc of the population had shopped on the internet a few years ago. Now over 40pc have. Chinese shoppers spent nearly $8bn (£5.7bn) in the first 10 hours of the country’s equivalent of Cyber Monday or Black Friday. Chinese authorities might have lost some of their reputation for financial competency, but they have $3.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to soften the blow of a slowing economy.

Unlike many policymakers in the West, those in Beijing still have plenty of tools at their disposal to avert economic disaster and to help the country to develop. The announcement last week of the opening up of the bond market to long-term international investors is a prime example and is a step in the right direction.

Ultimately China will shake off its current sniffles to continue to be a driver of global growth for decades to come.