Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” The creator of the immortal Sherlock Holmes knew this all too well; just when facts are needed, they prove the most elusive.

I have long been skeptical about the conventional political risk narrative that China is effortlessly rising to superpower status. The country faces myriad intractable economic, demographic, political, and geopolitical problems that will slow, and likely even halt, its march to dominance.