Long before the Chinese built up a sinfully-large trade surplus by exporting nifty little trinkets, they exported lots and lots of nifty little phrases useful in a crisis. And, like the trinkets, the phrases are everywhere. Such as the one that we’re told is a curse — “May you live in interesting times.” And that old lie, beloved of management books in airport shops, that the Chinese ideogram for “crisis” combines the ideogram for “danger” with that for “opportunity”, usually trotted out in times like these as another example of the gnomic wisdom of the uttermost east.

It hurts when management-wisdom books are correct. (And yet, sometimes they must be, if only because there are so many of them.) On this occasion, the evidence of opportunity is all around us, can be sensed even in the way that commentators that should sound gloomy are somehow upbeat; when government officials and economists who could be moaning seem energised instead, animated by a fresh sense of purpose.

And where do they expect that purpose to lead? Some want financial sector reform, some a second look at the Companies Act, others more government participation in infrastructure. All good ideas. But before we make the decision as to which is the most important target for reform, the biggest bottleneck, one giant step is needed: a closer look at precisely why there’s reason not to be gloomy. That might help us set priorities. (All right, at the risk of giving away the ending, it does.)

... contd.