Modern-day China still seems to search for a clear-headed sense of its true self and its proper place in the 21st-century sun.
Where and how this otherwise predictable resource-seeking superpower will fit into the scheme of things on this troubled planet is the 1.3 billion people question. The leaders of China repeatedly deny that their country of many storied millennia has any ambition whatsoever to mushroom into a dragonlike hegemon. But precisely that scenario has been the consistent pattern of rising and ambitious nations throughout history.
Yet China, we are told by China, will be different. But will it? Indeed, why should it be different from any other potent power in the course of history?