Martin Gilbert: No time to be pig-headed

China opening up amid slowdown

No sooner have the Christmas decorations come down than new ones have gone up to mark the Lunar New Year, which starts on 5 February.

It is good riddance to Year of the Dog and welcome to Year of the Pig - a symbol of wealth and prosperity in the Chinese zodiac. What a dog of a year 2018 was for global equity markets and especially for China's A-share market, with the CSI300 Index falling 26%. As anyone who has spoken to investors in China recently will know, sentiment there is negative. The country's economic growth is slowing, bankruptcies are on the rise and the US-China trade war rumbles on. Importantly though, China is not on the cusp of the sort of slowdown that might warrant such aversion. Yes, the economy is...