Deng Xiaoping was fond of quoting the ancient Chinese proverb “Tao guang yang hui”, which is generally rendered: “Hide your brightness, bide your time.” The idea was to keep China’s capabilities secret until the moment was right to reveal them. Until then, the priority was to raise incomes and integrate the country into the global economic system.

Now China is comfortably the world’s second-largest economy and, quite possibly, on its way to becoming the largest. In Xi Jinping it has a leader whose articulation of a China Dream – “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” – is explicitly aimed at recapturing national greatness. The time for false modesty, it seems, is over.

China’s growing sense of itself as a country worthy of respect, even deference, has been noticeable since 2008. The Lehman crisis shook its faith in market capitalism in general, and in American infallibility in particular. Recently, the process has gone further. China is commanding more influence over foreign corporate executives, national leaders and journalists alike. In the words of Orville Schell, director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society, Beijing has revved up its “gravity machine”, exerting a stronger pull on those with whom it deals. Everyone from David Cameron, the UK prime minister, to Matt Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, has felt the effect.