What does China want? Of all the large questions of our time, few are more compelling than those surrounding the rise of this economic superpower. Will the new generation of Chinese leaders, to be chosen later this year, harbour urges to overturn the US-led international order that has prevailed since the end of the second world war? Or is this a paranoid western delusion about a nation fixated on the extensive challenges it faces at home?
There is little consensus among military strategists and diplomats. And for anyone toiling in the less lofty fields of environmental policy, the debate about the Middle Kingdom’s ecological aims is just as perplexing.
In the space of a few short years, China has become the world’s biggest maker of solar panels and wind turbines. Its leaders have brought in a spate of pollution controls; shut down some of the filthiest coal plants; announced plans for pilot carbon markets, and spoken of building an “ecological civilisation” based on sustainable growth.