The 2008 Olympics has been billed as the biggest coming out party in history, delivering a stage on which China can reclaim recognition as one of the world’s great and powerful nations. But in truth, the Olympics will simply provide a high-grade political gloss for a nation that has already well and truly returned to a position of pivotal global influence.

After nearly three decades of uninterrupted economic expansion, and five straight years of double-digit-plus increases in output, China has become a motor of growth for the global economy and is on the verge of becoming the largest trading nation in the world.