One of the academics, Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Centre for Public Policy, argues that China's demographic pattern had already changed dramatically by the time the one-child policy began in 1980.

ECONOMIST: China's population

Indeed, in a precise reversal of the pattern of the 1970s, Fed policy since 2008 has been widely described as extremely loose despite the low inflation and high unemployment it has produced.

FORBES: The Swing of the Monetary Pendulum

That pattern met the needs of centralised political control and the policy of import substitution pursued until 1982.

ECONOMIST: All roads lead to Mexico City