These days, people expect a lot from China. Beijing is expected to help Washington persuade (or force) North Korea and Iran to ditch their nuclear ambitions. It is expected to set the developing world's agenda on reducing carbon emissions. It is expected to keep buying US Treasuries, but not to create the requisite surpluses by selling Americans consumer goodies they can no longer afford. While it's at it, it is expected to bail out Greece. Oh, and it is expected to keep its own economy barrelling along at 10 per cent a year. In short, it is expected to save the world.
The problem is China just does not see things that way. As Chinese officials may make clear in Davos, where such expectations are riding high, Beijing is not ready, or willing, to take up the leadership role being foisted upon it. Typical of what one hears in Beijing is the comment from Zhou Hong, director of the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “There will for a long time be a big gap between outside expectations and China's ability,” she says. “China is big. But it is poor. Its preoccupation will still be internal.”
That difference in perception has become a source of tetchiness, if not outright friction. David Shambaugh, a China specialist at George Washington university, says Barack Obama's administration put huge store in a joint document signed in November. That laid out the framework for a new era of shared responsibility in which the two will combine to tackle the world's biggest problems. But Prof Shambaugh, who detects a “hunkering down in Chinese diplomacy”, says the plan was stillborn. “They've become very truculent, sometimes strident, sometimes arrogant, always difficult,” he says of recent Chinese diplomacy.