Since opening up to the world in 1979, China’s economy has grown by an astonishing 10 percent, on average, in real terms every year. But many observers have pointed out that China’s recent “rise” is more aptly deemed a “return” to the preeminence it enjoyed before the eighteenth century.

With the effects of the financial crisis that began nearly two years ago still being felt today, the time has come for a candid assessment of the structural and regulatory weaknesses that helped create it.