Many commentators, including this newspaper, like to compare China's economy with America's, the world's biggest, which it is on course to rival in size if not in sophistication. Recently, however, parallels between the two economies have started to look more ominous. China suddenly seems to be exactly five years behind America. After several years of excessive credit, much of it in the shadows of the banking system, China's financial institutions stopped lending to each other this month; on June 20th interbank interest rates briefly soared to 25%. The crunch seemed horribly reminiscent of America's financial crisis in 2008, from which it has yet to recover in full.
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