TO keep its investments in business, the Chinese government will almost certainly continue to use political means, like propping up ailing companies with credit from state-owned banks. But whether or not those companies survive, the investments themselves have been wasteful, and that will eventually damage the economy. In the Austrian perspective, the government has less ability to set things right than in Keynesian theories.

Furthermore, it is becoming harder to stimulate the Chinese economy effectively. The flow of funds out of China has accelerated recently, and the trend may continue as the government liberalizes capital markets and as Chinese businesses become more international and learn how to game the system. Again, reflecting a core theme of Austrian economics, market forces are overturning or refusing to validate the state-preferred pattern of investments.

For Western economies, the Keynesian view is much more popular than the Austrian view among mainstream economists. The Austrian view has a hard time explaining how so many investors can be fooled into so much malinvestment, especially given the traditional Austrian perspective that markets are fairly effective in allocating resources. But China has had such an extreme and pronounced artificial subsidization of investment that the Austrian perspective may apply there to a greater degree.

The optimistic view is that Chinese excess capacity and overbuilding are manageable — that the current overextensions of investment will be propped up, but they won’t have to be propped up for long. In this view, the Chinese economy will fairly soon grow rather naturally into supporting its current capital structure, and its downturns will be mere hiccups, not busts.

The pessimistic view is that the problems are so large that the government’s attempts to prop up its investments with further subsidies could so limit consumption, and so distort resource allocation, that the Chinese economy will stagnate. In this view, the political means for allocating investment would grow to dominate market forces, the proposed “economic rebalancing” of the Chinese economy toward domestic consumption would become a distant memory, and China would have an even tougher time opening its capital markets and liberalizing its economy. Given that China already faces competition from nations where wages are lower, and that its population is aging, the country might not return to its previous growth track.

THE jury is out. But to my eye, we may well find a significant and lasting disruption, closer to what the Austrian theory would predict. Consider a broader historical perspective: How often in world history have countries enjoyed 30-plus years of extremely rapid growth without a major economic tumble somewhere along the way? One can be optimistic about China for the long term and still be fearful for the next turn in its business cycle.

In any case, China has surprised the world many times before — and is likely to surprise it again.