Three recent articles in The New York Times have signalled a “new” narrative about China. Once a threat by dint of its inexorable rise, now it poses a threat because it is in decline.

Moreover, Goodman cites MIT economist Yasheng Huang, who notes that exports plus imports in China total 40 per cent of gross domestic product, much of which comprises final assembly and re-exports of imported components. But while Huang appears to have left Goodman with the impression that reducing this “pass-through” trade would have a big effect, the fact is that the effect would be quite small, since imports are a subtraction from GDP. China is losing merely the value-added, a fraction of the overall product value.

A container ship at Yangshan deep water port in Shanghai on July 21. China’s declining imports and exports have elicited concern in some quarters. Photo: NurPhoto / Getty Images

Finally, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman rounds out the paper’s coverage of China’s “stumble” by offering an economist’s “systemic” view. According to Krugman, China previously grew “largely by catching up to Western technology”, but now it faces the problem of too much saving, too much investment, and too little consumption. It therefore needs “fundamental reforms” to “put more income in the hands of families, so that rising consumption can take the place of unsustainable investment”.

here is nothing new about Krugman’s key point about savings. Western economists were already pushing that line 30 years ago, when I became chief technical adviser for macroeconomic reform to China’s State Planning Commission. “Invest less! Consume more!” – the mantra made no sense to me then, and it still doesn’t today.

Should China have more cars but worse roads and fewer gas stations? Does it need more televisions, but fewer apartments to put them in? Does the population need more food and clothing, even though it was already mostly well-fed and decently dressed three decades ago?

Chinese workers are paid for building factories, homes, rail lines, roads and other public works. The typical (statistically average) Chinese family is not income-constrained. If it were, it would not be able to save as much as it does.

So, what is the new narrative really about? It is not so much about China as it is about the West. It is about our lead in technologies, our free-market system, and our ability to wield power and to keep all challengers at bay. It is about reinforcing what Westerners like to believe: the inevitable triumph of capitalism and democracy.