The spats between the United States and China appear to be getting more numerous and more serious.

The Chinese strongly objected to Washington’s latest arms deal with Taiwan. President Obama accused the Chinese of currency manipulation, while at Davos, Larry Summers, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, made an oblique attack on China by referring to mercantilist policies. The disagreement between China and the United States at the Copenhagen climate summit in December has continued to reverberate.

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“How are your Chinese lessons?” we asked our granddaughter Kristin, 8. “So-so,” replied this International School second-grader. “Why?”

“You and Kathie will need Mandarin,” we replied. Katarina, 5, is in kindergarten. Both grapple with Swedish, their mother’s language. Their playmates and nanny speak Cebuano.

“China will irresistibly shape our future,” writes Martin Jacques in the Observer. He updates his 2009 book “When China Rules the World” that foresaw Beijing’s economy overtaking that of the United States after 2020.

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I was unaware when I was planning my trip to China, starting today, that the timing would be quite so good

The past week has provided a decent statistical insight into the health of the world’s second biggest economy and I’m looking forward to seeing how the numbers compare with the reality on the ground. What is happening in China is particularly important right now because an apparent moderation in the US recovery and renewed sovereign debt worries in Europe have put the onus back on China to keep the show on the road. Whether its landing is soft or hard matters more than ever.

In the run-up to last week’s announcements, that debate had been unusually lively, fuelled by two conflicting indicators, one from the Chinese government and one from HSBC. The government’s purchasing managers index surged in March to a level indicating robust growth while the bank’s own measure fell to a level indicating a slowdown. Chinese manufacturing is either growing at its fastest rate in a year or contracting at an increasing rate.

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EU-China relations have been tested recently, not least with regards to a controversial EU carbon tax on airlines flying through European airspace. The tax has been resisted by China and others (including India), who argue that the EU has exceeded its jurisdiction by applying the full tax on flights that are only partly in its airspace. For its part, EU leaders are frustrated with the slow progress being made internationally in terms of cutting aviation greenhouse emissions. Analysts warn that, if the EU does not back down, there is a risk of a trade war developing as China retaliates (see, for example, the recent suspension of orders for new European-manufactured airplanes by China). If, as many predict, China’s rise heralds a new multipolar world order, do European policy-makers and citizens understand this new reality?

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The backdrop to the events surrounding Bo Xilai is provided by a huge debate about the country’s future

The news that Bo Xilai has been stripped of his positions on the Communist Party Politburo and Central Committee and that his wife, Gu Kailai, is being held on suspicion of murdering a British businessman has added a dramatic new twist to a story that first began to break in February. The dismissal of Bo, the former Chongqing party chief, surely marks the end of his political career. It also suggests that the path to the crucial Communist Party Congress in the autumn, when, in effect, a new President and Premier will be elected and seven of the nine-member standing committee that runs China will be replaced, could run somewhat smoother.

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Certain arrogant Westerners continue to ignore China’s rise and make negative predictions about China. Martin Jacques, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, wrote in an article recently published on the U.K.-based Observer newspaper. Based on abundant and accurate data, Jacques concluded that the Chinese economy still enjoys bright prospects.

China’s share of world economic output has risen from 2 percent to 10 percent over the past 30 years since the reform and opening-up, and the country has become the world’s second largest economy. The country’s annual foreign trade volume has surged from 500 billion U.S. dollars to 3.6 trillion U.S. dollars in merely 10 years since its accession to the World Trade Organization. As the world’s largest exporter, China has 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars of overseas assets and 18,000 enterprises abroad.

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Martin Jacques’s thesis – that China will become the dominant global power within decades, and it won’t become more westernised but will make the rest of the world more Chinese – is hard to dispute, and if one felt like disputing it one would soon be discouraged by the weight of evidence in the form of statistics, graphs, surveys and analysis Jacques brings to bear.

Reading this made me aware of my ignorance – I didn’t know the Chinese invented steam power before James Watt. At times I could wish the explanations crisper – Jacques repeatedly says that China is a “civilisation-state”, not a nation-state, and I would love to have the difference neatly explicated. But Jacques’s erudition is impressive – and persuasive.

– Brandon Robshaw

The expanded paperback edition of Jacques’ highly sympathetic assessment of China clearly places this “civilization state” (as opposed to nation state) in the context of east Asian economic history.

Jacques’ central thesis is that, although China was late to industrialise and is still developing, its exponential economic growth is supported by two millennia of broad political unity.

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The world has never witnessed anything like China’s rise before. The nearest parallel was that of the United States between 1870 and 1914. But America’s growth rate during this period was much lower and its population was much smaller. With a double digit growth rate and a population of 1.3 billion, China is in a different league. From 1978 until around 2000, the impact of China’s rise was largely a domestic phenomenon, though by the 1990s it increasingly began to be felt in East Asia. With China’s economy still only one-20th the size of America’s in 1980, this is hardly surprising.

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Recently, one of the latter surprised me. Rather than the usual scanning and accounting services from Bombay or Chennai, this was different. It was offering ‘advanced editorial services’. Pretty much exactly what I do, except not in that expensive first world place, London.

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