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.'