When will China lead the world? Don’t hold your breath.

During his trip to Asia in November, Barack Obama seemed strangely mute. Unlike Bill Clinton, who criticized China’s human rights record in front of then-president Jiang Zemin, Obama largely avoided the topic of rights. In Singapore, despite pressure from human rights activists, the president deferred to pressure to not release a statement calling for the freeing of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In Japan, the president worked valiantly to massage local sentiments, bowing deeply to Emperor Akihito – and drawing flak back in the United States from conservative critics for appearing weak.

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In recent months, as Asia has weathered the financial crisis better than the West, and the Obama administration has taken a deferential approach toward China, numerous new books have declared that, finally, this will be Asia’s era. From Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the end of the Western World to Kishore Mahbubani’s slightly older The New Asian Hemisphere to the recent cover story in the Atlantic Monthly by James Fallows, which compared China’s gleaming infrastructure to America’s potholed roads and horrendous cell phone coverage, the Asia cheerleaders are out in force.

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