China fact of the day

But China’s public capital stock per head is already far bigger than Japan’s at comparable incomes per head.

That is from Martin Wolf at the FT.  Here are the associated conclusions:

Slowing urban household formation means that fewer new homes now need to be built. Not surprisingly, returns on investment have collapsed. In sum, investment-led growth must come to an early end. Because of its size, China has also hit the buffers on export-driven growth, at a lower level of income per head than other high-growth east Asian economies. The trade war with the US underlines this reality. China’s working-age population is also declining. Given the huge rise in debt as well, sustaining fast growth will be very hard.

We will see, perhaps indeed in 2019, one way or the other.

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