Britain's industrial revolution began in the late 18th century the world has been dominated by the west, namely Europe and the US . Until well after the middle of the last century, it was widely believed that those countries that had been on the receiving end of European colonialism were destined for a perpetual status of dependency and underdevelopment. The rise of east Asia showed that not to be the case. More dramatically, the transformation of China has decisively moved the global centre of gravity eastwards. The 21st century will be quite unlike the preceding two centuries, in which power was located in Europe and the US and the rest of the world consisted of mere supplicants and bit players.
Although 1978 is still recent, we are already a long way down the road to the creation of this very different world. So far the process has been overwhelmingly economic. Europe, for example, is therefore still largely oblivious to the fact and consequences of this transformation, not least what it will mean politically and culturally for our continent. As a sign of our parochialism - and almost historically coincident with the rapid rise of China - we have become increasingly obsessed with the "Islamic problem". So long a cipher of the US, and now mired in its own travails and sense of decline, Europe has grown myopic and introspective, a poor vantage point from which to see the future.
In fact, we can already begin to see the broader implications of China's transformation: its global search for oil and other commodities; its increasingly proactive diplomatic presence around the world, from south-east Asia and the Middle East to Africa and Latin America; and a rapidly growing nervousness in Washington about China's emergent global role. And we are still only at the very beginning of this process. I have been struck on this visit to Beijing by the rapidly rising sense of self-confidence that characterises attitudes here - the feeling that history is "on our side".
History is proving surprisingly fleet of foot. In the aftermath of 9/11 and in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, few questioned the idea that the United States was likely to be the extant superpower for several decades to come. Few anticipated how quickly the neoconservative project would run into the sands - or that China would rise so quickly. The New American Century has ended before the new century has got into its stride. The story of this century - or the first half of it - will be the decline of the existing superpower and the rise of a new one: China.
The ramifications are enormous. Power will no longer be located primarily in the west. The assumptions that inform global discourse will cease to be overwhelmingly western. History will no longer be written with a hugely western bias. Chinese interests, history, values, attitudes and prejudices will become familiar to us all. Perhaps all of this does not lie so far in the future as we might think. In his speech at Yale University on his recent visit to the
