By rights, China should be much respected and even praised for its continuing record-setting poverty reduction, but there are signs that it is becoming the object of a growing and unhealthy obsession in the west, particularly the US.
The mood about China in America is 'a combustible mix of euphoria, fear, admiration and cynicism', according to Ted Fishman's, China, Inc: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, one of a number of business books on China now sweeping the US. It adds: 'On those emotions ride great tides of capital, the strategic plans of businesses great and small, and the gravest political calculations in the world's capitals and city halls.'
A year ago, fear and cynicism were not part of the American public reaction to China. Yet, disturbingly, at public, legislative and even governmental levels, a hostility-tinged obsession with China is developing because of its extraordinary success in business. This success has led, on the one hand, to the loss of some American jobs, and, on the other, to rock-bottom prices for US consumers as well as investors in China.
Whatever the tradeoffs, this is strictly business. Is China breaking the trade rules? No - if its exports fall foul of the World Trade Organisation, other countries, as the US and Europe are now doing on textiles, are entitled to challenge China.
Is it because China is not passing on the rich returns to its people? No - it won a World Bank accolade last year for lifting 400 million people out of poverty between 1978 and 2003, a feat no other country has come close to matching.
Is China somehow being unfriendly? No - poverty reduction is an essential step towards freedom and democracy, as nearly all eastern Asian countries have demonstrated.