More than anyone else, it is the Chinese who fear the dragon that is supposed to symbolise their gargantuan, swallow-you-whole economy, which has just overtaken Japan to become the world's second largest. China wants to be seen as the loong, which is a softer, entirely auspicious dragon-like being that is loathe to, in fact incapable of, breathing fire.
These radically different perspectives were described by celebrated philosopher Lin Yutang in the 1930s. "Where there is a national mind so racially different and historically isolated from the Western cultural world [as the Chinese], we have the right to expect new answers to the problems of life," Lin wrote in The Importance of Living, which contrasted the Taoist cult of the "loafer" with that of the American "hustler".
