Introduction

Abstract

In our first book China Calling: a foot in the global door we describe how reforms over the past centuries have shaped modern China, allowing it to open doors in global trade and finance. With Western governments frantically trying to meet the financial exigencies of today, posterity will note that China’s foot is now well and truly wedged into those doors. The global credit crunch and recession of 2008 and 2009 reduced the value of Chinese investments in the West, yet paradoxically strengthened Chinese influence across the world, changing the balance of power.

To relieve the present exigency is always the object which principally interests those immediately concerned in the administration of public affairs. The future liberation of the public revenue, they leave to the care of posterity.

(Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, p. 534)