Analysts have long assumed that China’s authorities retain plenty of fiscal firepower if needed to keep the expansion going as they clamp down on dangerous levels of credit, but Beijing may already have exhausted any further scope for budget stimulus. Fitch Ratings warns that the pace of loan growth over the last five years takes China into uncharted waters, with debt jumping from $9 trillion to $23 trillion, or 200pc of GDP. The economic “efficiency” of debt has collapsed. Each extra yuan of debt now yields just 0.18 yuan of GDP growth.