China has seen growth on a scale unparalleled in modern history. Where hundreds of millions were once destitute, extreme poverty has been all but cast into the annals of history; now, the world is competing to attract the wealth of China’s growing middle and upper classes.

Analyses of the country’s explosive growth are aplenty. Real gross domestic product (GDP) has grown 64-fold, literacy is above 95 per cent, and in a once Communist country, the private sector, at least on paper, now accounts for 60 per cent of economic activity.