“What’s so bad about deflation?” President Xi Jinping said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Don’t people like it when things are cheaper?” This (possibly apocryphal) nugget has been circulating in social and mainstream media as dreams of Japanification once again tickle the fantasies of even highly credentialed economists and pundits. Old tropes and buzzwords are being flung with gleeful abandon – balance sheet recession, deflationary spiral, lost decade – as President Xi has so obviously demonstrated rank economic ignorance.