We know what the west wants from a resurgent China. We have a pretty good sense of what China doesn’t want from the west. What’s missing from this story of global geopolitical upheaval is a clear idea of what China wants from its rise to great power status.

Like many European and American commentators I spend a fair amount of time listening to Chinese scholars, officials and diplomats. A few years ago such figures were a rare sighting on the international conference circuit. And visitors to Beijing were left feeling that their interlocutors had been carefully screened to admit only one view of the world.

Not any more. Some months ago I listened to a Chinese vice minister casually acknowledge divisions at the illustrious Central Party School about relations with Washington. Some among the keepers of the ideological flame thought the US would only ever understand the currency of raw power; others that China’s self-interest still lay in co-operation as well as competition.