"Good morning, Albert," said the Chinese lady to me with a broad grin.

We are on our way into a lecture room with a group of other Chinese visitors on a study tour for finance managers.

She told me she thought I looked a lot like Albert Einstein.

Now, although I have been trying to acquaint myself with some of the finer subtleties of Chinese culture in recent years, I am still not sure whether that counts in any way as a chat-up line.

In any event, I can't be displeased to be connected, however loosely, to a man who in terms of intellect and moral authority was one of the titans of the 20th century.

I am a little bemused nonetheless.

Taking a glance at the photo adorning the head of this column, (one which even my own mother would contend hardly flatters me), you might be hard pressed to make out the likeness my Chinese friend could see.

What is bizarre, however, is she is not the first Chinese acquaintance to spot a resemblance to the great physicist.

I have, in fact, even been asked politely in Tiananmen Square (no less) to have a photo taken with passers by simply on the grounds of that lookalike status - and on more than one occasion.

I did read somewhere, I am sure, that between human cultures there are small but significant differences in the way we read and recognise facial features.

Subtle variations in physiognomy register differently.

It might even be that the brash, racist insistence "I can't tell those (fill in according to prejudice) apart" has some slight basis in fact.

Though the advice "Look just a bit harder and the differences fast become apparent" is always spot on; for example, my good self and the great man.

What we see is often at least as much a result of what we expect to see as what is actually there.

This is as true for many other aspects of experience as it is for faces which brings, at a stretch, to the recent perturbations in the Chinese economy.

If you are minded to believe the whole Chinese economic miracle is more properly regarded as a "miracle" - no more or less than the greatest Ponzi scheme in economic history - then recent developments will be seen as (once again) the final beginning of the end.

Not forgetting the conviction the Chinese authorities have been relentlessly cooking the books, in terms of both finance and economic statistics, for most of the past couple of decades.

On the other hand, you might just be persuaded the recent devaluation is little more than the Beijing authorities meekly acquiescing in international pressure to align exchange rates.

You might also be persuaded of the view, volunteered by a couple of these recent Chinese visitors, the Shanghai Stock Exchange is even more of a casino than its international and longer-established counterparts and that activity in it bears as much relation to the fundamentals of their economy as (dare I say it) current Chelsea performance has to the probable state of the Premier League come May.

There is perhaps scope for a more measured assessment with regards to the Chinese economy.

The process which the Chinese are looking to manage - in the course of a generation or so - is one that took as much as a century or so in the current developed economies.

You would have to have an even greater belief in the managerial omniscience of their government than they do themselves to expect that it might be achieved without the occasional upsets.

At a slightly more technical level, measures of economic growth and performance tend to be more robust when an economy is some sort of steady state rather than when it is going through significant structural change.

Some analysts have suggested the numbers may not track growth in new sectors in personal consumption in China as they pick up contraction in the longer-established export/manufacturing areas.

And this all in context where there is quite legitimate concern about both the intrinsic quality and political legerdemain in the official statistics.

So what is going on in China? Search me.

The wobble in stock markets outside China in August seemed to turn itself around in the course of week (what was that about casinos?).

Maybe, what we all should be doing is looking a bit harder and deeper into developments there and trying to discern the real features that are emerging.

Trying to avoid the temptation to assume that every move confirms our prejudices - on whichever direction these lie.

You really don't have to be an Einstein (or look like one) to work that out.

Michael Loftus is director of News from the Future