I have written before that I don’t think that Chinese power is all that it has been cracked up to be. As the Economist points out, the Chinese seem to be well aware of their power limitations–an awareness that would help explain a lot of their behavior:

Some Chinese economists worry out loud that China’s massive stimulus-spending might have bought the country only a temporary reprieve. Bubbles, they fret, are forming in property markets, inflationary pressure is building up and reforms needed to promote sustained growth (including measures to promote urbanisation) are not being carried out fast enough. Occasionally, even the government’s worst nightmare is mooted as a possibility: stagflation. A combination of fast-rising prices and low growth might indeed be enough to send protesters on to the streets.

Abroad, Chinese leaders are struggling to cope with what they feel to be an accelerated shift in the global balance of power, in China’s favour. This has resulted in what Mr [Russell Leigh] Moses [a political analyst in Beijing--ed.] describes as behaviour ranging from “strutting to outright stumbling”. They reacted with oratorical fury in January, when America announced a $6.4 billion arms deal with Taiwan. But while pandering

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