According to the American Chamber of Commerce in China (www.amchamchina.org), a quarter of the US companies active in China have moved some operations from that country or are planning to do so, due to slowing growth and rising labour costs (compared to its Asian rivals).

The ACCC said that 77% of the respondents to its annual Business Climate survey said they felt less welcome in China in 2015than they had in 2014, citing wide-ranging monopoly probes that have targeted foreign companies.

Lester Ross, the ACCC’s vice-chairman, said: “Some of the policies that are being considered or have already been enacted are fundamentally leading China in the wrong direction.” He added that Internet censorship was a concern for many firms, with almost 80% of respondents saying that “China’s sprawling on-line control apparatus has had
a negative impact on them”.

Chinese authorities can censor all company Web sites in China and limit access to those outside by means of a web of controls known as the Great Firewall of China. More than 70% of the US firms said that, as a result, they cannot access Web sites and information sources that are crucial to their business. Mr Ross said: “The inability to use on-line tools — Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, YouTube and Gmail are all blocked in China — hindered their ability to operate.”

Meanwhile, China’s GDP grew at its slowest pace in a quarter of a century last year. The National Bureau of Statistics said that the 6.9% growth figure was the lowest since the 1990 figure of 3.8% (the 2014 growth rate was 7.4%).

Zhang Gang, an analyst at Central China Securities, said: “Expectations of further cuts in interest rates and banks’ reserve ratios have increased, now that these economic figures have been published.” The service sector stood at 50.5% of GDP in 2015, the first time it has ever accounted for more than half of the economy.

Liao Qun, chief economist at Citic Bank International in Hong Kong, said: “We expect growth to slow and the Chinese government to limp ahead with structural reforms to the economy. When the macro-economic data is weak, as it currently is, the government tends to pause in its attempts to transform the economy away from investment and exports to one more oriented towards domestic consumer demand.”