From Property Bust to Tech Boom: Is China Trading One Bubble for Another?

WINSTON CHURCHILL famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. This serves as a prescient warning about how we could be in the middle of another bubble in China, this time centred on high-tech manufacturing.

The last bubble, which was mainly about real estate, saw an extraordinary acceleration in China’s demand for petrochemicals, persuading too many project proponents that this would carry on into the distant future.

True, exports remained a...