In the eyes of the West, China is now a world power. At the launch of talks between America and China this week, President Obama declared not just that the relationship between the two countries was as important as any in the world, but that it would "shape the course of the 21st century". As President Hu Jintao also acknowledges, China and the United States shoulder important responsibilities on major global issues.
In Europe, 80 per cent of those surveyed recently considered China the second most powerful country in the world, after the United States. And when I speak to British students, they constantly ask me how a stronger China will use its position, and what the ascendancy of a country so different from the West will mean to the world.
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