Editorial
Tom Clark
All points east
It feels like an age ago after a sizzling Mayday, but it’s only been a few weeks since I found myself snowed in at the Holiday Inn near Heathrow. You could pick up the i newspaper, but a less-familiar alternative was also proffered to travellers: China Daily. One headline gives a flavour of the many front-page stories about Xi Jinping: “World leaders offer their congratulations.”
The west is dimly aware that China’s gangbuster growth is creating a superpower, but we’ve kept our heads in the sand about the political ramifications. Any old atlas of the British Empire or modern-day map of US bases reveals how trading giants get drawn into power games. Sometimes the link between financial and diplomatic clout is hard-wired into the rules: Kishore Mahbubani explains (p10) that when China becomes the world’s biggest economy, the IMF’s constitution will require it to move from Washington to Beijing. This change would come about even without any “great power” ambition, but as Isabel Hilton relays (p20), there is plenty of that in Xi’s China. The country is creating international clubs and a calendar of summitry that puts China inside—and the US outside—the room.
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