We live in a new era and China is increasingly playing an important and influential global role. This should be unsurprising for those familiar with history. For most of the past five millennia, China was either a major power or what some might today call a superpower, including long periods when it had no significant competitors anywhere in the world.
Despite all that power and time, you are reading this in English, not Chinese. You might be from one of the more than a dozen countries bordering China, with your own long history and language intact. Or perhaps you’re in Europe, sipping a cup of tea amid imperial ruins. Wherever you are, you repeatedly hear about the dangers of
