Stock market chaos raises doubts about China’s state-shackled economy

NOT long ago, global markets were fixated on a nation in the throes of financial upheaval. Its equities markets were crumbling, its debts sky-high. Media pundits, investors and foreign governments began to question the long-term viability of its political-economic model.

Sound familiar? That country was the US, and the year was 2008. Wall Street had engineered a financial catastrophe, sending global markets into a tailspin.