It is a truth occasionally acknowledged that if you lay a map of China over one of the US, some striking similarities emerge. Their size is uncannily close, with both occupying almost exactly 6.5 per cent of the world's land mass. Their shapes are broadly similar, if you make allowances for Alaska. (That at least spares us a Chinese version of Sarah Palin.) Both have a rich eastern seaboard - the US has a rich western one too - and swathes of relatively underdeveloped hinterland. History has placed their most important city, Beijing and New York, in the top north-east corner.

If you ask Chinese academics whether China has a role model, a surprising number point to the US. That country is the only one - leaving aside Russia - with the continental scale and oceans of ambition to match China's own. Even culturally, there are superficial similarities. Viewed from Japan, with an etiquette-laced culture that values craft above commerce, China looks like an American-style can-do nation where money is king.