Our lust for Chinese investment has caught us out, Ashley Madison-style | Simon Jenkins

Sneaking off to China to beg for political investment in vanity projects that no European would touch is no route to economic recovery

China was always the Ashley Madison of public money. Finance ministers with an infrastructure problem would sneak off to Beijing for a quickie billion and return with smiles on their faces. The Chinese seemed willing and no one need know. George Osborne and David Cameron have done it for HS2 and Hinkley Point. Boris Johnson can't keep his hands off Chinese skyscrapers. Now something dreadful has happened. Someone has told the Chinese people where their savings have been going. Does it matter? Of course it matters. Any student of economic history knows that when a swiftly urbanising economy exports its surplus savings - as Britain did in the late-19th century - it loses touch with reality and goes into recession. Money is tipped into African railways, Brazilian mines and Russian bonds. China has been tipping cash into worthless transport and energy projects around the world, or storing it in empty London towers. It encourages reckless governments to get involved with stupid projects that no sane banker would support.

Boris Johnson can't keep his hands off Chinese skyscrapers

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