I was in Brussels this week. Jose Manuel Barroso had just delivered his state of the union address. The Commission president talked about Europe as a global player and leader. He called it a key ambition for this generation of politicians. My sense is of a continent slipping into a small-power future.
I was influenced perhaps by the event at which I was a guest. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a US think tank that has been spreading its wings to build a global presence, had assembled a group of its smartest scholars to talk about China.
This was not one of those drearily familiar sessions at which everyone trips over themselves trying to predict just how quickly China will elbow aside the US as the pre-eminent nation. Instead the exchanges were a reminder that power often lies in the eye of the beholder. China’s ascent often looks a lot faster and smoother to those on the outside than to the politicians and policymakers in Beijing grappling with the social stresses and strains of economic transformation.