Davos, which many in Asia consider to be a rich man's club dominated by “western thinking”, proved the perfect venue last year for Wen Jiabao, China's premier, to let off steam. After years of being lectured about the virtues of free markets and financial deregulation, Mr Wen turned the table on his hosts, lacerating the west for bringing the world to the brink of crisis with lax oversight, profligate fiscal policy and the “blind pursuit of profit”. Together with Vladimir Putin, Russia's then-buoyant prime minister, he used Davos to send a message about the crumbling state of the old order and the shift to something new.
A year later, a lot has happened. China has, if anything, performed even better than predicted, though doubts remain about the sustainability of its investment-led growth, supercharged with massive government spending and directed bank lending. Nevertheless, China grew by an estimated 8.5 per cent last year, and is expected to grow at nearly 10 per cent in 2010 as exports pick up and grandiose infrastructure projects come fully on stream.
The US appears to have concluded that China's economic surefootedness will translate into a much bigger diplomatic role. The tone of the visit by Barack Obama, US president, to Shanghai and Beijing last November, suggested that Washington now considers Beijing a crucial component in tackling any big global issue, from climate change to reshaping the institutional architecture that has predominated since the war. But, as the US found in Copenhagen, the cause of international co-operation and China's view of its own self-interest may not always be aligned. As Giles Chance writes in his book, China and the Credit Crisis: “China has acted in a fashion that will be immediately familiar to long-time observers of the Middle Kingdom. It does not want to be perceived as an outlier to the international community, and even less to be isolated. But neither will it put itself on the line.”
