China is becoming an increasing force in world affairs, as its drive for commodities, raw materials and markets means it reaches far beyond its national borders. According to the Economist, China, with only a fifth of the world’s population, ‘gobbles up more than half of the world’s pork, half of its cement, a third of its steel and over a quarter of its aluminium’. The country’s hunger for resources means it exerts increasing influence around the world, but the Chinese government has been criticised for dealing with dictators and repressive regimes, and undermining Western efforts to impose a human rights agenda. Should China be forced to use its influence to curb the nastiest of its friends, including the governments of Sudan and Myanmar, or is it naïve to expect this from a country which is not even democratic itself?

In any case, what about the benefits China brings to poor countries? For all Gordon Brown’s and Bob Geldof’s claims to be making poverty history, in reality many African countries now look to China as a source of infrastructural growth, commercial investment and cheap credit. Does China offer real hope for development in Africa, or are the gains only superficial? In 2006, the People’s Republic set out the ‘China dream’, a clear alternative to the American dream, with a commitment to three powerful ideas: economic development, political sovereignty and international law. Is this a legitimate independent foreign policy, or simply an excuse to flout transnational rules and duck out of internationally-sanctioned humanitarian interventions? Are Western critiques of China’s role in the world born of envy rather than ethics, and do they add up to xenophobia? Or are we right to worry about the emergence of a new and undemocratic superpower?